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Converting speech to text can be done automatically with good speech recognition software. This can transcribe your speech, leaving you free to focus on other things.
Feature in Word: Convert speech to text
Microsoft 365 includes a dictation feature that allows you to simply ‘speak’ your documents. You don’t need to be a subscriber to use this, as Word Online is a slightly stripped-down but completely free Microsoft service.
- If you don’t already have one, create a Microsoft account and log in to the Microsoft 365 website.
- On the left-hand side, click ‘Apps’ and then ‘Word’ to open the programme. Then create a new document.
- There is a small microphone icon at the top of the toolbar. Click on it, and Word will ask you which microphone to use. Select it and agree by clicking “Allow”.
- As soon as you click “Allow”, the microphone is enabled and you can start speaking straight away. If you’d like to adjust the settings, first deactivate the microphone by clicking on it again, then tap the cog icon.
- Reactivate the microphone once you’ve made all your changes. You can now speak whatever you’d like to dictate.
Speech-to-text: On Windows, you can do this without any software
On Windows, you don’t need any additional software to convert speech to text. Using speech recognition, you can control your computer with your voice and dictate text in Notepad and other applications. Here’s how to do it:
- Click the Windows button and type “Speech Recognition”. Then open the result that contains a link to the Control Panel. Alternatively, you can search for it directly in the Control Panel under “Ease of Access”.
- Then select “Start Speech Recognition” and follow the setup wizard the first time you use it.
- Once speech recognition has been set up, open the application and you can now dictate your text into a Word document.
- To do this, start speech recognition by clicking the microphone button and you’ll immediately see every word you dictate appear in the Word document.
Convert speech to text using an app
If you want to dictate text whilst on the move and have it converted to written text, there are some good apps available:
- Android and iOS already have their own built-in speech recognition features. When you open the Notes app and start writing, you can start speech recognition by tapping the microphone icon.
- Alternatively, you can use the free app Speechnotes, which can even create backups in Google Drive.
- The iOS app ‘Dictation – Speech to Text’ can also be used for this purpose. You can export the text you’ve created and have voice recordings transcribed.
- Although not an app per se, it is still worth mentioning: Mozilla DeepSpeech. You can install this open-source project on a Raspberry Pi and then use it as a tool to convert speech into text.
