Dictate for Free on Your PC using Google Docs

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll show you how you can use Google Docs in a Chrome browser to dictate for free on your PC.

I’ve gotten used to using the dictation feature my iPhone to speed up all sorts of typing activities — emails, texting, notes, etc.  Since I work on a PC, I find myself wishing that I could dictate into it sometimes also.  Specifically, since I’m training to be a therapist, I have to write up progress notes for each patient after sessions.  These notes take much less time if I dictate rather than type.  In addition, because I’ve been sitting the whole session, I prefer to stand and dictate rather than sit and type. 

I happen to know that the best dictation software for a PC is Dragon Naturally Speaking.  They have been around forever and are the undisputed leader in the industry — unfortunately, a single user license costs $200.   I am not willing to spend that kind of money on a “nice to have”. I also tried out the voice to text feature that was built into Windows 10. And I am here to tell you that is is AWFUL.  It produces so much garbage that it doesn’t actually end up saving me any time. 

Instead, I use a feature that is available on Google Docs when used with a Chrome browser.  I use Google Docs all the time, but was unaware of this feature.   Open a new document and select Tools and then Voice Typing.  When you are ready to dictate, click the microphone icon.   You can use many of the same spoken punctuation commands that Siri uses on your iPhone like comma, period, and new line — although you will find that not all of them work.  The dictation quality is pretty good — and it types as you talk.  It also doesn’t seem to run in sprints the way that Siri does — you can just keep the dictation going as long as you want.

This is not entirely ideal — after all, I usually want to dictate into a different website or software program than Google Docs.   But I can easily cut and paste from Google Docs into whatever program I’m working in.  To make this easier for myself, I created a new document that is simply named Dictation.  In the header, I included the instructions  on how to invoke dictation and also the convenient keyboard shortcut which is Control + Shift + the letter S.  I put this in the header rather than in the body of the document so that when I do Control + A to select all to copy and paste my dictated text, it won’t pick these instructions up as well.  Then I save a link to this document in my shortcut bar for Google Chrome, so I can access it easily. 

 All in all, for my limited use, using this feature in Google Docs is a great, reliable, free way to dictate on my PC.  Let me know what you think.  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!