00:00 Introduction 00:45 System based dictation 01:30 Finding Voice Typing 02:10 Basic input 03:30 Changing Words 03:54 Languages and accents 05:06 List of Commands 05:45 Basic formatting
Doesn't change much in my opinion, still far too clunky for natural usage. What it should do is guess / suggest edits and punctuation on the fly. Think about this with "grammerly" mixed in if you like. I'd rather have to go back through and change where it gets punctuation wrong because mostly it won't, than have to voice things like "Period" (or "full stop" rather in UK english, try that out to see if it works) If you have to think in mid-sentence to say "comma" it totally breaks the flow of your mind, so if the software can just apply this stuff after it has a complete sentence with high % accuracy, you can speak normally and go back and correct any decisions it made on your behalf post talking. it needs to be able to differentiate pauses and speech being directed at it rather than the text too. For example, "ah crap, can you change that {it needs to be able to}, to {it should be able to} please" the software would understand this in context and find the text I'm referring to and simply change it. I can then say, "nah, not there, further back" (in the text), if it choses the wrong correction. Basically, it needs to understand all that a human typist who's listening to a speaker dictating to them would. You could also marry this with touch input, so you could point to the place in the text you meant, just like you could over the shoulder of a secretary say. adding yet more utility, so you could point to the text to be corrected while speaking about the correction saying "I mean this bit here". You want it to be a two way communication , where you can tail off in thought and say "hmm, lets try that last sentence again, doesn't sound good, how about X instead, what do you think? " In other words it needs eyes, ears and comprehension. When it can do all that, (be at a human secratary level) then it's a game-changer, not before, sorry.
The one thing you are not telling your viewers, is that this voice typing feature ONLY WORKS if you use Google Chrome browser! Why did you leave out that detail? If you try Firefox or Safari browsers, it won't work! What's up with you dude?
I've seen this used with people learning to speak a new language. If the speech to text doesn't catch it, then you know you are pronouncing it wrong. It's another self-teach fantastic tool.
Indeed! Language learners also regularly use it for transcribing podcasts and RUclips videos. In the online language learning community this tool in Google docs is already well know. Doesn't work well with things that have multiple speakers, though. For example, a podcast that is an interview or a discussion. It will pick up the first person and seems to just ignore the second. No idea why.
Yes... sometimes I try in English but despite my level, there are still plenty of words I pronounce not understood by this technology such as AND I guess I need to work more on my pronunciation
@@RobertKaucher If you are using it in a crowded office, you don't want your dictation to be mixed with your colleague making a phone call next to you. That's why it captures just one person's voice.
Holy moley! This is EXACTLY what I need and have been looking for for some time. My hands have become arthritic and I can no longer touch type. It's all hunt and peck now, with tonss of editing (see?). You have rescued my 90-year-old finger bones from the trash heap of old age!
Mid 1997 a dictation software that could do exactly all this was launched: Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I used it back then. Nothing new to see in this video. It was doing all that back in 1997! 27 years ago!
It's a shame really these features aren't highlighted more by companies, this is a game changer for disabled people such as myself. I just found your videos and they're super informative.
It’s a game changer for kids who are still learning to type. It is also far less frustrating for children who are editing their essays, etc. (So many rewrites are needed.) And last but not least, it is a terrific help to students with dyslexia.
As someone with carpal tunnel problems, and a writer who works in google docs with my co-author, I can't believe I've never heard of this and I'm so thankful I stumbled over your video! I'll definitely be giving it a try.
As a novelist (Jerry Furnell) I find typing much easier than dictating. Ideas tend to ripen slowly. When I use dictation, I spend way more time going back and doing corrections than if I just typed in the first place. I too was an early user of Dragon, but abandoned it after losing time rather than saving time. I think dictation is perfect for simple emails and basic communication. But typing slows the thoughts and allows the brain to formulate better sentences/phrases for novels.
I agree with you. Once sentence after another. However I think this will be great tool for me for the part of the process of running with the imagination. Sometimes my imagination runs so fast I cant follow it. I lose it when I try to type everything down. Didint write for a while now, can wait to start again.
@@tihomirjolic2632 Ah... but when you slow down the imagination it ferments and allows unforeseen ideas to mature and take over so that the original idea seems shallow.
@@JerrySuneagle Also, some people are naturally more vocal while for others being vocal takes away part of the thought process. I'm an artist, and sometimes I do voice chats with colleagues while I work. I've found out that I can't really do much while I talk. I can while I listen, but talking somehow takes too much of my brain. But I see other people who have no problem at all with it. Like those gaming streamers who talk non-stop for hours while playing games.
@@germangarcia6118 It's just practice, they just spend way more talking than pretty much anyone else on the planet. If you wanna get good at it, spend a few hundred hours talking while doing work, just to yourself, then you can introduce other people for a few hundred hours... after all that you can start trying to explain things.
Same here. Voice dictation is cool, but for those who type a lot, in the long run typing is both faster and easier. The reason is that when you type you don't have to wait for the program every few seconds to make sure all was correctly typed in. When you constantly keep control over what computer types when you speak, it makes you tired quite fast and much harder to concentrate on what you actually have to say. Voice dictation for a 10 minut demo is all fine, but try to do it 2 hours every day. You will be exhausted. Keyboard does not require any extra attention on your part. So as cool as voice recognition is, it is not a game changer. Great toy though!
I have used Dragon Naturally Speaking for at least13 year. It was way ahead of it's time back then and does all this and more. Having this now integrated into Google docs without having to buy a third party application is great. Just felt like they need their props here. After all they were one of the pioneers of speech to text, at least one of the good ones !
I bought Dragon long ago, was never able to get it working satisfactorily for my purposes. Everything today is driven by AI and it's far, far more accurate and usable!
This is definitely a game changer and improvement in technology. My husband has Parkinson's and typing has become most difficult. He can, however, still use his voice. It has been an enormous benefit for him to remain, somewhat, independent. Thanks for your detailed explanations and information. Be blessed.
Voice typing is great for keeping a diary where the quality of sentence structure and punctuation doesn't have to be optimal. And keeping a diary or similar is a good way to practise organising your thoughts in a consistent, logical manner orally - not as easy as it sounds but worth it in the end.
@@pjsavagejr I use Dairium. When I bought it several years ago there was a small one-off fee. I don't know what the current pricing is. I like the ability to add photos to text entries too.
What a breath of fresh air this video was. Being visually impaired is no fun when it comes to typing but, Google Docs voice dictation opens up a new world. After losing Dragon 13 I could not justify the amount for Dragon 15 or 16. Thanks to this video, I am able to communicate in many more ways. Great job.
As a 59-year-old professional who never learned to touch-type, this technology is a boon to me. And, like most new systems, the more I use it, the easier it is to execute. Great stuff!
I (62-year-old) took typing in high school, one of three male students, in a class of 150=ish) and took some grief from friends for taking it. I even entered contests. This is a cool (and free) tool but even at 59 you can easily learn to type. It takes little time and pays dividends. I watched my youngest "thumb type" on her mobile and - WOW - that was a skill that I needed. Honestly, it is more difficult to thumb type than it is to touch type. I spent at least 40 hours practicing thumb typing to get just "good enough", nowhere near a typical Gen-Z.
It's also important to try out a variety of keyboards to find one that works well for you. Some have the keys placed too close together & I end up hitting the sides of nearby keys. Go to an office store with some available to try out. Makes a huge difference. My brother actually prefers chicklet style keys, whereas I like mechanical.
I (59M) took high school typing and worked in radio back then, too, so can type competently. I also viscerally love keyboards as a communication device. Nonetheless, I'm really impressed with this stuff and am thinking maybe I should try using it once in a while.
@@JohnnyC10071959 Fantastic perspective, the fact that you did typing when it was "uncool" and the fact that you embraced and wanted to learn thumb-typing both speak volumes about your character. So many folks get caught up in whatever was the latest when they learned it, and just stop wanting to learn about new techniques. Many of the greatest artists and inventors to grace our planet were very big on always learning. 😊
@@JohnnyC10071959 I'm proficient with slide-typing on my phone (but you need to check twice for autocorrect typos), however, my problem with Gen-Z communication is that they are not communicating in English and it takes me more time to descypher their lingo and abbreviations! SMH...
Hi Steve, Neal from Thailand here. Like you, I kind of discovered this gem by accident. My wife and I use this feature in the Thai language to create documents for sharing with our Thai friends. It works amazingly great. Keep up the good work you do.
I lost my right arm 18 months ago to an errant airplane propeller, and while I’ve made reasonable progress in developing dexterity in my left hand for a 73 yr old man, i’m still so much slower than before the accident, especially writing and typing on my computer keyboard. I tried my various dictation apps but in the end I would spend more time going back and tidying up mistakes, it wasn’t worth it. This program looks like the perfect solution. Thanx so much for bringing g it to my attention. 😊
I love this! The majority of my dictation needs are when I'm out and about and I DESPISE typing on glass on a phone etc . Mobile dictation capabilities on my phone directly into Google Docs, while I am out and about doing other tasks is a game changer. Previously I had to use voice memos but then I had to go back and listen/dictate from there. Voice typing is fantastic!!
This is a game changer for outlining fiction novels and novelas. More accurate note dictation would allow me to focus more on ideas and creativity rather than the task of typing.
This reminds me of the original "Dragon Naturally Speaking" one of the first voice-to-text software from the 90s. We had to train it with our voice by reading passages from traditional stories it selected, but once done you could real-time edit and control all formatting by voice. SO this to me is how it should have always worked. Finally we're back to something as decent!
I was on the team that invented that. I didn't see any features in this video we didn't have in DNS in the 90s and we had many others too. My favorite is "resume with..." where you repeat something you already said that you want to correct and it overwrites the old text and replaces it with the new all in one command.
Right!! I think I toyed with this but not sure!. I agree that although this is better than the default software, why not enhance it far more using today/tomorrow’s tech? Use artificial intelligence. Give the ai a name, eg Siri, such that hearing the name -pauses dictation mode/enters command mode- This eliminates having to memorize commands & we can use the ai more broadly in command mode eg you have a brain fart or are tired … “Siri, find me a word to use instead of ‘more than enough’ -Siri opens a thesaurus & gives suggestions verbally &/or written (cuz blindness or multi tasking away from screen) “The best choice in the sentence as u have it written, Amy, is ‘overabundance’, but if u want the word that fits you & your writing style, u would normally choose ‘plethora’. Other choices are ‘plenty’, ‘surplus’, (etc). Which would u like me to replace it with?” Me: “overabundance. Ok, now dictate from where I left off” -Siri goes back to the end of my doc-in-progress & I resume dictation “Siri, this is an article for a politically-liberal media. Do u have any recommendations regarding my tone or content? Where am I at, in relation to an ideal length? “Ideally, double your current length. You might have to dumb it down & replace your pronouns with gender-neutral ones. Would u like me to fix it? Also, your opinions as currently stated will be perceived as racist & offensive & the article will get u canceled unless u completely revamp it” Welcome to the 21st century & beyond!
Long time subscriber here - so glad I got to see this! I am a high school English teacher of Special Education students with a variety of disabilities. We use all the Google products at school, and you can bet I will introduce this feature to my students and fellow teachers. Thank you, Dotto!
Trying to write has been challenging for me. I can type fairly well but my mistakes and the desire to fix them get in the way of my thought process. I've been using Microsoft dictation lately and it has improved my work flow. Being able to dictate my story lines out, having less errors, going back later and edit with keyboard is great. Haven't tried Google docs yet.
I'm 82....have hand written (and typed) journalings/poetry/observations/essays - for decades! Techno- savy I am not......plus fingers no longer nimble. YOUR info inspires me. (Actually I came across your RUclips site when searching info about photo scanning). MANY thanks!!!
Having been a typist using fingers for over fifty years, I prefer to type, partly because when I’m writing a book, I like the slower pace, because it gives me a little time to form the sentences, whereas if I’m simply speaking the quality might drop, however I may try voice typing when I need to get something down quickly. Thanks for letting us know.
Using voice dictation might be good for writing dialogue since when you're talking you're writing spoken language. But the rest of your pros probably should be typed because it's forcing you to think in a written language not a spoken language
I don't know if it was mentioned during this video or the previous one, but apparently, as of now, this doesn't work when you open Google Docs on Firefox but works perfectly well on Google Chrome. So if (like me) you don't see the option under the tools menu, chances are that you're not using Google Chrome.
Thanks Antonis. I have a large project, remembered this video, then couldn't find the tool and my heart sank. I'm on Safari, so I really appreciate the heads up and all the time you and Dotto are going to save me.
@@GeoZero there are plenty of other Chromium-based browsers out there such as Brave, Vivaldi, Chromium, and arguably the best, Ungoogled Chromium, if you need compatibility with certain tools. I haven’t used Chrome in years and solve this kind of problem using a combination of Ungoogled Chromium and Vivaldi.
This is a great feature! Especially if one has arthritic hands or any other disability where using the keyboard is difficult or impossible. It might just be the impetus for me to start on an autobiography or other forms of prose which I have been putting off for so long. Writing poetry with this might be fun too. The funniest thing happened when I tried this out using English and my German-speaking husband began to speak to me close by. It was hilarious to see how the German speech was being "interpreted" into English words. Silly but so much fun!
YAY!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH! As a person with disabilities this is going to be a LIFE saver! I can type fast for others, sure. But I have learned I get too overwhelmed when I want to express myself. I have thoughts but then typing them does not go well. It is very difficult for my Emotional & Logic brain to work together when the issue is personal or has me upset/triggered (which I think is common, tbh). Then there seems to be a HUGE issue with ADHD and MANY other diagnosis that affect executive function, right?.! I think pandem!c made others see how necessary a tool like this was! It's sooo much easier to THINK to dictate, if I am doing something or just walking around. That is why this is SO AMAZING for myself. I can't wait to share & feel productive!!! I can be doing other tasks/multitask my brain to get my ideas/thoughts on paper! 💛💚💜
Amazing! Reminds me several years ago, I said to my tech support staff that I wanted to try Naturally Speaking because my typing was so bad. My tech rep said not so fast because naturally Speaking was only about 80% effective at the time. I responded that my keyboard was only about 30% effective, so that would be a real gain for me! Everything’s relative! I’ll try Google Docs! Geoff
I had no idea that this was an option. This literally changes everything and it changes my mind about what tools I will use for writing moving forward.
Thanks Steve! Google has really improved voice typing and it seems much more accurate than Siri! I have been using while also doing livestreams so that I get a useful transcrition of the narrative from my live stream too. Nice! :-)
I really like voice typing as I find it saves time, and my thoughts flow more freely when dictating into the document. Being able to edit on the is also a game changer. Thanks for sharing your tips.
4:48 - It'll be the accents. The UK has a lot of different accents that make English words sound very different to American words. Try using Googles pronunciation tool and setting it to British English and then American English for words like herb, aluminium and oregano, you'll soon hear the difference and that's before you get into regional accents across the UK.
I have a nerve condition that causes mayhem with my typing and speed and lets not talk about auto correct. I have used other speech translators before but the amount of time editing my mistakes, or the programs misinterpretation made them frustrating to use. Also I never knew my speech changes between being fresh and tired. I appreciate you bringing this video to us and am happy to say it works better than anything I have used before, so.. Thank you indeed.
As someone who is currently struggling with wrist pain and thus using dictation this is perfect! Also i always use google docs for school so this is perfect. Thank you
If you are having wrist pain and use the computer a lot, you might have carpal tunnel. My wife just found out that she has it and is scheduled for surgery. It only get worse, not better.
@@PoeLemic I went to get it checked out and I apparently do not have carpal tunnel syndrome. I was told to rest for a month and I feel a bit better. Although I do feel better because I stopped using my hand as much = not doing my hobbies 🤔 I am glad she figured it out!
First time hearing about this new voice typing, and first time on this YT channel as well. I have to say, I am very impressed with both, I will be checking out voice typing next time I edit a doc, and I wanna try to make it to the webinar next Wednesday, that sounds really cool honestly!
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. While dictation is convenient I agree that it can be a little bit annoying when trying to edit something that you’ve dictated or you want to modify something in the document. I have a spinal injury which affects my neck and both arms with pain and my left arms range of motion. I’m not able to do much these days but typing definitely takes a significant toll on me with the positioning of my arms and neck so this could be extremely useful for those occasions where I do you need to type something out. I’ll definitely be looking in to it a bit more. Thanks.
Long time that I didn't watch your videos, but today I am glad that I saw this Google document voice typing. It is a great tool for people that are acquiering a new language and for my activism. Thanks!
This is such an awesome video Steve, thanks for this info! I still do all of my comedy/script writing using a pen and notebooks, but when I bring it into the digital realm to publish final drafts, this will improve my work flow SO MUCH! Awesome content!! Thanks for doing what you do!!
Have you used Voice commanding in Microsoft word online? Apart from the commands that you've showed, it has even more commands like - Bold last three words - Select hello world (selects the words 'hello world' in document) - Quote last sentence - Insert a 3 by 4 table - Go to next paragraph - Insert numbered list - Next - Exit list - Exit table - Insert comment this is nice and so much more...
Makes a lot of sense since MS BOUGHT Nuance/Dragon in 2016. BAM! Dictate shows up in MS Office 365 both desktop apps and online MS Office. I've not used my Dragon v15 since this came about in MS 365, and I was a very long time user of Dragon (1993 through all its versions and publishers).
I have a severely dyslectic friend, who - because of that - always procrastinates when it comes to writing. And when she finally does her writing, it costs her loads of time (she has to use multiple spell checkers to deliver a readable text). All of this is quite hindering her business, since she wants to write blogs and has to update patient files. I shared your video with her. She is happy. 😁 So thanks! 🙏
I love this! It’s going to be a game changer for me, because I cannot type. My productivity level will increase tremendously, because I won’t have to dread “pecking” a document as I have been doing for years. Thank you so much!!
I regularly use voice typing for creating blog posts and articles. Unfortunately, I find I have to make so many corrections it's only marginally helpful with Google. It regularly changes correct versions of what I said into incorrect ones. I've come to the documentation and can't figure out why it does that. Dragon speaking is better but expensive (I'm using that now}. It also doesn't work well in Google Docs. I usually prefer a plug-in for Google docs called Speech Recognition Sound Writer. Unfortunately, it has fewer editing features.
I am glad your experience with Dragon is good. I found Dragon to be insanely buggy and prone to crash (as in about 80% of the time). I have heard many people review it well, but there is a host of deeply unsatisfied customers out there who take a very dim view of the product and the company (and their lack of customer service). And all that's without mentioning the cost! Pretty sure were mainly in business due to the lack of competition, but that is changing rapidly now.
Uninstall Google app updates. After that you can easily correct rubbish produced by Google voice typing through a pull-down menu. Doesn't work with the updated version.
VERY pleased that this accepts the Australian standard 'full stop' rather than the American 'period'. Just wish the command list would indicate that there are options available.
This is a game changer for me! I have always said I need to buy a handheld recorder and Google Voice will do nicely. The fact editing can be done, "on the fly" as you say, is such a time saving benefit. Thanks for sharing and caring!❤😊👍👍
This is so amazing. I teach ESL for refugees/immigrants. I am also a 'story teller' and teach people to write personal stories using Guided Autobiography. I just knew my students have amazing stories of resilience but lack the English skills to tell them. I wanted to collect stories for a book 'Immigration Stories of Resilience'. Through MUCH trial and error, I came across Voice Typing on Google docs. I have the student dictatate their story in their language and then I use DeepL translation to translate to English. VOILA, I can read their amazing life stories. I did NOT know how to help them punctuate so now, after your video, I do, and I will put the commands into a document into all the languages of my students so they can edit their stories. Thank you so very much!
One simple comment ... you are an awesome guy with "Adequate and required informaton" God Bless you always !! Its really hard to find a pal like you .. .you've got a new subscriber !! Love ... from India ♥
Great content as always. This IS a game changer. Having to deal with post Covid issues like Covid brain fog. I'm a little slower in getting things from thought to text. If I can skip a step and lose the typing I can work so much faster and freer because now it just flows. Thanks for posting this as it is a great help to me.
This is amazing. .. and wait until they integrate this into the translator too!!! Then we can voice type, and have the AI appropriately translate in to all those other languages!
When it comes to using this on my phone, yes. It's essential. I'm more taken aback at how accurate the voice to text technology is. There are some aspects that I hope change, like figuring out names of people. I will dabble a bit more based on what you've educated me on here. I personally love voice to text when it comes to the desktop and Google search bar. Sometimes it just takes too much effort to reach up to the keyboard when surfing the web...
Thank you for this video, it has been a big help to me! This year, I have lost the use of one hand and one eye, due to a health situation. So this has given me back control over the things I needed for communicating with and helping my clients. As well as documenting my studies and work.
I discovered Doc's voice typing in 2017 when I was doing a Master's thesis. Even back then, it was leaps and bounds better than iOS or anything else that I had available. I dictated most of my thesis at my computer, getting all my thoughts out there and clean it up section by section. It is great.
This is a game-changer. Many years ago I was certified with IBM's Voice Text Dictation, later called Via Voice. It was an amazing program, and way ahead of its time. Any technology like this requires learning and practice. Because of the level of control this technology provides, it is possible to become very efficient. Further, it is not possible to type as fast as an average person can speak. My profession was Information Technology, now I am a technical writer. I am a fast typist, however this technology is definitely superior to my typing skills. Also... There's only a few companies I would trust with developing this technology correctly: IBM and Google.
I also think that another benefit of doing dictation, or voice typing, is that it helps you clarify your thoughts beforehand and actually makes you a better communicator/speaker. I believe one of the reasons for this is because, when you dictate, you have to really think about what you want to communicate to your audience, in advance, and then ensure that your vocabulary choice and grammar constructs are in line with your message. I actually think that dictation should be a mandatory skill taught in formative schools to encourage/enhance people’s ability to better communicate their thoughts. Great video! Thanks for sharing. 🙏🏻
My thought process is completely different between typing and dictation. When I use dictation, I have to stop and think so much more often, so that's definitely something i have to work on. It may be that I have some sort of mental block which prevents me from finishing a phrase, or maybe typing gives me time to "buffer" what I'm trying to say.
Think back to when we write with ink from a pen, that cand not be erased so easily erased and rewritten, even more so back when it was a quill and took significant time to form every stroke. Just writing this sentence I have been very conscious of the amount of changes, insertions, and rewrites I have made. When I stop to think about it, the time it takes me to type is inconsequential compared to the time it takes me to form a sentence I am happy with. The keyboard is not the bottleneck, and in that sense, it is perfectly fine and no changes are likely to be revolutionary. (until the point the computer can read my mind and disentangel what I want to say from the chaos of my thoughts... and at that point I would need to seriously consider if is still MY thoughts, how would I know?)
This is a game changer for writers. It's another great tool for the repertoire. Paper and pencil, the diagram, the flow chart diagram, recordings and this gives more layers to the writer.
I've been using voice typing for over a year, but you really emphasized a few features I did not know about. For example, I was mainly using it for writing in my native language, taking notes from my reading, etc. But now I think I will start using it for foreign language learning! Thanks Dotto!
As someone that writes a lot of articles for websites this is a pretty big deal - as long as you give yourself some time to get used to it. It can REALLY speed up your workflow and makes "writing" much more enjoyable.
If you’re publishing, how can it be faster to speak type then go over it and thoroughly check it for grammar to avoid embarrassment, than to just type it. I can type faster than he could speak type…
Great review mate! I'm not sure if this was mention before but the difference in dictation between the US and UK, is how words like 'realize, monetize recognize and apologize' are spelt. UK variant is 'Recognise. Monitise. Apologise. Realise' and the dictation tool spells them accordingly. Hope that helps someone!
Sounds amazing and seems to have great potential. I'm a touch typist and a teensy cell phone keyboard drives me crazy trying to type with one or two fingers when its so 2nd nature to use both hands to type. This sounds ideal. Ill give it a try.
Been able to do this on galaxies for about 5 years since the note 8. As long as you are in typing mode, holding down the button and speaking will auto transcribe your words. There's also been a note to self plug in to the voice recorder that automatically transcribes your note to yourself along with the words for quick searches. The 3 phase Bixby button was attacked so heavily because of its elegance. It works like a walkie talkie button so it starts and stops exactly when you want and you can use it securely rather than waiting for it to detect a silence. In busy rooms you can hold the button and it'll switch between the final word if it's unsure and cycle through then you can simple let go. Mix use and text to speak had been part of the note 8 series for 5 years now.
I am honestly quite surprised I haven’t been told about this. I really could’ve used this to help with my flow of writing during my last university essay. I’ll definitely have to try this out. It would have been nice though if this was also a feature in Microsoft Word. I’ve found the system on Word to be rather buggy for voice to text so this one here would have been much better. Thanks for this.
As someone who was super frustrated with Dragon Naturally Speaking back in the day, I'm eager to try this. But as a writer, I find that speaking taps into a different level of creativity for me if that makes any sense. But I'm going to learn the commands and see if this voice typing and editing helps me to be more productive with less wear and tear on the wrists. Thanks!
I am so excited to have discovered this new tool. This tool is actually new to me. Where can I go to get a list of all the commands to be more efficient? I'm not that computer savvy and this truly is a major game changer as you said Steve. I look forward to your response as well as all the other great videos you will be sharing with us.
I remember back in the Windows XP days I purchased a software called "Dragon Naturally Speaking" and because of Windows 10 I had to fork over another $200 just to dictate in a word document. Now, with Google Docs, the voice typing is so much better!
@@dottotech I disagree. DNS in its early iterations did require a fair amount of training to dictate accurately, and you had to learn several, often unintuitive commands. It improved dramatically over the years, and I would still be using it if they had a product for Apple computers. Perhaps Google Docs voice typing has reached a level of accuracy equivalent to DNS. Also, I have found, and DNS's user manual states, that the major advantage of typing by voice is getting words on the page quickly. By contrast, making corrections by voice is very tedious. Making corrections with the keyboard instead is far more efficient.
Thank you for making a video on this. I work a desk job and recently was diagnosed with carpal tunnel in both of my hands. I can type very quickly, but it bothers my hands now so this might be a huge help.
Wow! Thank you for this video. I am very much "technically challenged", so a presentation just like this is what I needed. Lol! I have been taking pen to paper in an effort to comprise my memoir, but have been struggling. I think "voice typing" is the answer to my writing issues!
Great video, thank you for sharing 🥳 It's funny that I stumbled over this somewhere, added it to my Watch Later playlist & when I wrote English subtitles for a German interview recently I tried out dictating for the first time & felt like these things exactly were missing for me to actually use my voice more instead of typing everything. Glad I saved this for later 🙌
Thanks there's a difference bewreen UK and US spelling in text. So when you choose the country version the text editor will automatically insert the correct spelling. For example color ( US) and colour (UK).
Nope. At 4:57 he selects English (US) [not UK] and it still shows at 5:41 and yet at 6:05 it spells it "colour" so it is NOT the selection made in Google -> instead it is as he says at 4:55 - that the spelling is determined by what you set in your keyboard settings.
The big plus on this is that there is no software to install. I have been a user for many years of Dragon Naturally Speaking. Once you have used it a while, trained it on your vocabulary and have gotten comfortable with the mode and commands, it truly is a game changer. Microsoft's implementation is really sad in comparison. My former employer locked down all of the company computers a couple of years ago and would not permit me to load Dragon, so I have had to do my compositions on my personal computer, then sneaker-net the finished document to the company computer for publishing via a flash drive. They did relent and allow Microsoft's voice system to be turned on, but I quickly abandoned it because it was too slow, made too many mistakes, andcorrecting it was a nightmare. . Finally something that I can use without all the hassle. Too bad it's not in Gmail, too.
You kinda can but from google docs and is another new feature recently added. Click @ in docs then click on create an email and when completed you can send it via gmail. Google had the ability to save templates within Gmail but was always klunky and find this a better option. Pair this with text to talk and done deal.
I've found it is much easier and faster to open a prepared template in WORD, type and edit my email text and then cut-and-paste the entire block of finished email into gmail. Much faster, easier to edit and I'm looking forward to incorporating MS version of speech-to-text into the process.
This is great. Google Voice Typing is far faster and more accurate than Windows 10 system dictation. HOWEVER - random letter capitalization, with seemingly no rhyme or reason, is pervasive. After using it a great deal, it became apparent to me what Voice Typing is doing. For instance, If you type "against the wind" in any context, you will get "Against the Wind" (Bob Seger, e.g.) every time. Voice Typing is trying to anticipate any popular culture reference -- book titles, movie titles, song/album titles, you name it -- that you might need to capitalize. It does this relentlessly, to the point of being VERY annoying and time-consuming to fix. Who do they think needs this "feature?" I'm flummoxed. If anyone knows how to disable it, please let me know!
@@jcrnda as far as I can tell it only happens with voice typing, not actual typing. And it seems to do only the most popular titles, I doubt that deep cuts would be a problem :) try “don’t stop believin”
It's likely not a feature, but a "bug" due to the fact the speech recognition system is drawing on huge Internet language corpuses. That phrase with capitalization is probably more frequent than the frequency of those three words being used consequently, and so the algorithm is simply selecting the word token(s) with the highest probability given the previous words.
Bob Seger FTW. I want the AI to start PLAYING Against the Wind when anyone reads the voice-typed text. Maybe a voice command like "Hold Formatting" or "No caps" etc something would be good? Stay gold.
Actually, the dictate feature in MS Word (Microsoft 365) allows you to interact with the keyboard and mouse without disabling the microphone. The auto punctuation is a little wonky, though.
I love it especially for longer documents. I am old school and used to do dictation with a secretary. This is the same. You have to develop a skill to be able to talk, format and visualize in your mind.
Thanks so much; this is great; I started w the dictation/Voice typing as often arthritis is a pita on a keyboard...as you noted, the keywords-shortcuts are not all available with dictation, and my thoughts flow better speaking aloud than typing anyhoo.... You are appreciated.🤠 God Bless.
I absolutely loved this video 🤩 I am going to start using it in Google Docs straight away. I was also admiring your sign, "No Limit Over 50". My only disappointment is that I seem to have missed your webinar "Why Grey is Great"
Thank you so much. This is perfect for me. I used dragon speaking naturally years ago but couldn’t keep up with cost of the new versions. I have just started using. Google docs and now need to learn spreadsheets for a business that my wife and I are beginning. I believe that you will help me a lot. Closing with the Princess Bride tag was AWESOME. Be Well and Good Journey Richie
If voice typing helps you get ideas out more easily, that's great. :) I think the reason it hasn't taken off, though (and why Google doesn't talk about it much) is that typing is just a more efficient way for most people to work -- especially with predictive text. Saying the word "period" takes less time than typing a period, and I think that's emblematic of the basic problem. Speech recognition is great for giving your phone or computer commands to execute (e.g., turning on lights, searching the Internet, etc.), but it's hard for me to imagine typing ever being slower than speaking.
I try to write 90 minutes, 4-5 days a week. I dictate two scenes and then edit them for transcription errors. I average 3,000 edited words per session. That means I can typically draft an 80k manuscript (my normal) in around 6 weeks. I can type around 65 wpm, but composition is always much lower than that. For me, dictating is around 30% faster.
This takes me back 20 years when I was experimenting with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, with the same set of commands. Now, possibly, the AI can recognise the actions better than Dragon, because i had to learn commands back then. Good stuff. Now waiting for future AI based speech recognition which will allow us to write software. Ha!
I have been using this feature for a while. For some reason, regarding my creativity in writing, the app hasn't surpassed my state when I write out my thoughts or type them out. When that phase comes, then this app would be a game-changer for all of my work, which is heavily type-intensive considering that I'm in the legal profession. Out of the voice typing apps that I've tried, this is one of the most accurate, and I'm not a fan of Google overall.
I can relate. I'm thinking about "state-dependent learning and memory" because most people type material that needs a different voice then their speech, even professional speech in many cases. So, for me, switching gears and somehow speaking the material that I would normally type is hard…as if my fingers have a different style than my mouth. But, like you said, it's probably a matter of practice. I'm thinking also that we have verbal stylings that make it easier for us to talk with very little time to compose what we're going to say. That would make it even more habituated and hard to shift for most(?) people.
Been using dictation for years. The biggest caveat is it's very easy to be overly verbose. Spoken language is much different from written language that's very easy to quote right and quote spoken language. This can be a real problem for your readers and it's also going to inflate word counts and make editing harder. Even for myself when I'm just taking notes for playing a D&D game I end up having three paragraphs of text whereas if I hit typed it it probably would have only just been one It also picks up your little mannerisms or your little idiosyncrasies your little catchphrases that you might say a lot you know like saying things like you know or like.
Thanks for this explanation. It will change things, especially when you split your workflow into punching out text, and only then start formatting. Formatting as you write eats up too much time. Try it, go use voice typing for your main text, then spend some time formatting. Now the real game changer would be if Voice typing learns your formatting style. Then you could dictate your text, then command it to apply your preferred style.
Thanks to you I just tried this out. Being Deaf and Blind (wear CI and legally blind) I am loving this. if I'm writing something (other then a quick email) I can just write... voice type... while I'm relaxing in my chair. Then later go to computer and then edit. So far it's been accurate in spelling.... unlike spell corrector which is a joke!
In the 80's, we thought by 2000 we wouldn't even need keyboards and mice anymore. We were just gonna be talking to these things. ... Missed that one. I use this a little, but it's a pain that it only works in Google docs. I'm a programmer. I sure wish I could have had this in my coding environment.
As a quadriplegic (with a neutral North American English accent), I find it frustrating to use Siri, Apple Voice Recognition or Google Voice Recognition. The software and reliability fail in comparison to the Dragon Naturally Speaking I used on my PC back in the early 2000’s. DNS actually learned your voice and your speech patterns. I don’t understand why Apple etc… don’t have it so your device only recognizes the voice of the person who’s logged in. I could watch TV, listen to music or have other people speaking, fairly close by, without it getting confused. It’s like we’ve taken a strep backwards.
This option is much better for me to write because I’m writing some emotional memories and when I type I have to stop for weeks on end just to process the healing. But this is great because I will be able to get a lot more out and heal quicker. God bless you for sharing this. Thank you
I am a retired physician so am used to dictating instead of typing, so I was excited to view this video. However I ran into unexpected problems with what you seemed to think was obvious: My program hears me well enough to type the text I dictate, yet it stubbornly refuses to obey my voice commands. I thought it was the microphone and checked it out. My question is why can my text information be easily transcribed, ie I am being heard, but my voice cannot activate the voice commands to edit my text or move the cursor. when I say "New line". It simply writes"new line".:
00:00 Introduction
00:45 System based dictation
01:30 Finding Voice Typing
02:10 Basic input
03:30 Changing Words
03:54 Languages and accents
05:06 List of Commands
05:45 Basic formatting
Fantastic!
THANK YOU...my eyes are getting dim...so....yahoo off I go...xx. n
😋😙😎😋😐😃😋😐😃😋😑😄😑😄😋😑😄😋😋😑😄😋😄😑😄😑😋😄😑😎😄😑😎😎😑😄😎😑😄
Doesn't change much in my opinion, still far too clunky for natural usage. What it should do is guess / suggest edits and punctuation on the fly. Think about this with "grammerly" mixed in if you like.
I'd rather have to go back through and change where it gets punctuation wrong because mostly it won't, than have to voice things like "Period" (or "full stop" rather in UK english, try that out to see if it works)
If you have to think in mid-sentence to say "comma" it totally breaks the flow of your mind, so if the software can just apply this stuff after it has a complete sentence with high % accuracy, you can speak normally and go back and correct any decisions it made on your behalf post talking.
it needs to be able to differentiate pauses and speech being directed at it rather than the text too.
For example, "ah crap, can you change that {it needs to be able to}, to {it should be able to} please" the software would understand this in context and find the text I'm referring to and simply change it. I can then say, "nah, not there, further back" (in the text), if it choses the wrong correction. Basically, it needs to understand all that a human typist who's listening to a speaker dictating to them would.
You could also marry this with touch input, so you could point to the place in the text you meant, just like you could over the shoulder of a secretary say. adding yet more utility, so you could point to the text to be corrected while speaking about the correction saying "I mean this bit here".
You want it to be a two way communication , where you can tail off in thought and say "hmm, lets try that last sentence again, doesn't sound good, how about X instead, what do you think? " In other words it needs eyes, ears and comprehension.
When it can do all that, (be at a human secratary level) then it's a game-changer, not before, sorry.
The one thing you are not telling your viewers, is that this voice typing feature ONLY WORKS if you use Google Chrome browser!
Why did you leave out that detail?
If you try Firefox or Safari browsers, it won't work!
What's up with you dude?
I've seen this used with people learning to speak a new language. If the speech to text doesn't catch it, then you know you are pronouncing it wrong. It's another self-teach fantastic tool.
Indeed! Language learners also regularly use it for transcribing podcasts and RUclips videos. In the online language learning community this tool in Google docs is already well know. Doesn't work well with things that have multiple speakers, though. For example, a podcast that is an interview or a discussion. It will pick up the first person and seems to just ignore the second. No idea why.
@@RobertKaucher As I have hearing loss, I'll keep that in mind if I lose more hearing. (Re: youtube vids)
Yes... sometimes I try in English but despite my level, there are still plenty of words I pronounce not understood by this technology such as AND I guess I need to work more on my pronunciation
@@RobertKaucher If you are using it in a crowded office, you don't want your dictation to be mixed with your colleague making a phone call next to you. That's why it captures just one person's voice.
@@repkamarek that makes perfect sense!
Holy moley! This is EXACTLY what I need and have been looking for for some time. My hands have become arthritic and I can no longer touch type. It's all hunt and peck now, with tonss of editing (see?). You have rescued my 90-year-old finger bones from the trash heap of old age!
Glad I could help!
90?! Nice to meet you!
Me too!! Been looking for this solution
Mid 1997 a dictation software that could do exactly all this was launched: Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I used it back then. Nothing new to see in this video. It was doing all that back in 1997! 27 years ago!
It's a shame really these features aren't highlighted more by companies, this is a game changer for disabled people such as myself. I just found your videos and they're super informative.
It’s a game changer for kids who are still learning to type. It is also far less frustrating for children who are editing their essays, etc. (So many rewrites are needed.) And last but not least, it is a terrific help to students with dyslexia.
It’s a game changer for lazy students like me 🤣🤣
As someone with carpal tunnel problems, and a writer who works in google docs with my co-author, I can't believe I've never heard of this and I'm so thankful I stumbled over your video! I'll definitely be giving it a try.
What's your take one year later?
As a novelist (Jerry Furnell) I find typing much easier than dictating. Ideas tend to ripen slowly. When I use dictation, I spend way more time going back and doing corrections than if I just typed in the first place. I too was an early user of Dragon, but abandoned it after losing time rather than saving time. I think dictation is perfect for simple emails and basic communication. But typing slows the thoughts and allows the brain to formulate better sentences/phrases for novels.
I agree with you. Once sentence after another. However I think this will be great tool for me for the part of the process of running with the imagination. Sometimes my imagination runs so fast I cant follow it. I lose it when I try to type everything down. Didint write for a while now, can wait to start again.
@@tihomirjolic2632 Ah... but when you slow down the imagination it ferments and allows unforeseen ideas to mature and take over so that the original idea seems shallow.
@@JerrySuneagle Also, some people are naturally more vocal while for others being vocal takes away part of the thought process. I'm an artist, and sometimes I do voice chats with colleagues while I work. I've found out that I can't really do much while I talk. I can while I listen, but talking somehow takes too much of my brain. But I see other people who have no problem at all with it. Like those gaming streamers who talk non-stop for hours while playing games.
@@germangarcia6118 It's just practice, they just spend way more talking than pretty much anyone else on the planet. If you wanna get good at it, spend a few hundred hours talking while doing work, just to yourself, then you can introduce other people for a few hundred hours... after all that you can start trying to explain things.
Same here.
Voice dictation is cool, but for those who type a lot, in the long run typing is both faster and easier.
The reason is that when you type you don't have to wait for the program every few seconds to make sure all was correctly typed in. When you constantly keep control over what computer types when you speak, it makes you tired quite fast and much harder to concentrate on what you actually have to say. Voice dictation for a 10 minut demo is all fine, but try to do it 2 hours every day.
You will be exhausted.
Keyboard does not require any extra attention on your part.
So as cool as voice recognition is, it is not a game changer. Great toy though!
I have used Dragon Naturally Speaking for at least13 year. It was way ahead of it's time back then and does all this and more. Having this now integrated into Google docs without having to buy a third party application is great. Just felt like they need their props here. After all they were one of the pioneers of speech to text, at least one of the good ones !
I bought Dragon long ago, was never able to get it working satisfactorily for my purposes.
Everything today is driven by AI and it's far, far more accurate and usable!
I use Dragon too. It's ok. This does look way more versatile though.
You just reminded me of great software (that's what we used to call apps back then 😜)! Nostalgia!
I’ve been using Dragon actually speaking since 2000 nothings new
@@lisamays912 Even Microsoft Office 2000 had voice typing.
This is definitely a game changer and improvement in technology. My husband has Parkinson's and typing has become most difficult. He can, however, still use his voice. It has been an enormous benefit for him to remain, somewhat, independent. Thanks for your detailed explanations and information.
Be blessed.
I have Parkinson’s also and it is helping me just got a remember the commands
Voice typing is great for keeping a diary where the quality of sentence structure and punctuation doesn't have to be optimal. And keeping a diary or similar is a good way to practise organising your thoughts in a consistent, logical manner orally - not as easy as it sounds but worth it in the end.
@@pjsavagejr I use Dairium. When I bought it several years ago there was a small one-off fee. I don't know what the current pricing is. I like the ability to add photos to text entries too.
What a breath of fresh air this video was. Being visually impaired is no fun when it comes to typing but, Google Docs voice dictation opens up a new world. After losing Dragon 13 I could not justify the amount for Dragon 15 or 16. Thanks to this video, I am able to communicate in many more ways. Great job.
is there an auto punctuation tool or do we have to remember to say "comma, full stop" etc etc
As a 59-year-old professional who never learned to touch-type, this technology is a boon to me. And, like most new systems, the more I use it, the easier it is to execute. Great stuff!
I (62-year-old) took typing in high school, one of three male students, in a class of 150=ish) and took some grief from friends for taking it. I even entered contests. This is a cool (and free) tool but even at 59 you can easily learn to type. It takes little time and pays dividends. I watched my youngest "thumb type" on her mobile and - WOW - that was a skill that I needed. Honestly, it is more difficult to thumb type than it is to touch type. I spent at least 40 hours practicing thumb typing to get just "good enough", nowhere near a typical Gen-Z.
It's also important to try out a variety of keyboards to find one that works well for you.
Some have the keys placed too close together & I end up hitting the sides of nearby keys. Go to an office store with some available to try out. Makes a huge difference.
My brother actually prefers chicklet style keys, whereas I like mechanical.
I (59M) took high school typing and worked in radio back then, too, so can type competently. I also viscerally love keyboards as a communication device. Nonetheless, I'm really impressed with this stuff and am thinking maybe I should try using it once in a while.
@@JohnnyC10071959 Fantastic perspective, the fact that you did typing when it was "uncool" and the fact that you embraced and wanted to learn thumb-typing both speak volumes about your character. So many folks get caught up in whatever was the latest when they learned it, and just stop wanting to learn about new techniques.
Many of the greatest artists and inventors to grace our planet were very big on always learning. 😊
@@JohnnyC10071959 I'm proficient with slide-typing on my phone (but you need to check twice for autocorrect typos), however, my problem with Gen-Z communication is that they are not communicating in English and it takes me more time to descypher their lingo and abbreviations! SMH...
Hi Steve, Neal from Thailand here.
Like you, I kind of discovered this gem by accident. My wife and I use this feature in the Thai language to create documents for sharing with our Thai friends. It works amazingly great.
Keep up the good work you do.
I lost my right arm 18 months ago to an errant airplane propeller, and while I’ve made reasonable progress in developing dexterity in my left hand for a 73 yr old man, i’m still so much slower than before the accident, especially writing and typing on my computer keyboard. I tried my various dictation apps but in the end I would spend more time going back and tidying up mistakes, it wasn’t worth it. This program looks like the perfect solution. Thanx so much for bringing g it to my attention. 😊
I love this!
The majority of my dictation needs are when I'm out and about and I DESPISE typing on glass on a phone etc . Mobile dictation capabilities on my phone directly into Google Docs, while I am out and about doing other tasks is a game changer. Previously I had to use voice memos but then I had to go back and listen/dictate from there. Voice typing is fantastic!!
This is a game changer for outlining fiction novels and novelas. More accurate note dictation would allow me to focus more on ideas and creativity rather than the task of typing.
This reminds me of the original "Dragon Naturally Speaking" one of the first voice-to-text software from the 90s. We had to train it with our voice by reading passages from traditional stories it selected, but once done you could real-time edit and control all formatting by voice. SO this to me is how it should have always worked. Finally we're back to something as decent!
Via Voice
I bought that, it cost a fortune but I didn’t really get on with it even after training
I was on the team that invented that. I didn't see any features in this video we didn't have in DNS in the 90s and we had many others too. My favorite is "resume with..." where you repeat something you already said that you want to correct and it overwrites the old text and replaces it with the new all in one command.
I got it as a gift, but never got past training to use it
Right!! I think I toyed with this but not sure!. I agree that although this is better than the default software, why not enhance it far more using today/tomorrow’s tech?
Use artificial intelligence. Give the ai a name, eg Siri, such that hearing the name -pauses dictation mode/enters command mode-
This eliminates having to memorize commands & we can use the ai more broadly in command mode eg you have a brain fart or are tired …
“Siri, find me a word to use instead of ‘more than enough’ -Siri opens a thesaurus & gives suggestions verbally &/or written (cuz blindness or multi tasking away from screen) “The best choice in the sentence as u have it written, Amy, is ‘overabundance’, but if u want the word that fits you & your writing style, u would normally choose ‘plethora’. Other choices are ‘plenty’, ‘surplus’, (etc). Which would u like me to replace it with?”
Me: “overabundance. Ok, now dictate from where I left off”
-Siri goes back to the end of my doc-in-progress & I resume dictation
“Siri, this is an article for a politically-liberal media. Do u have any recommendations regarding my tone or content? Where am I at, in relation to an ideal length?
“Ideally, double your current length. You might have to dumb it down & replace your pronouns with gender-neutral ones. Would u like me to fix it? Also, your opinions as currently stated will be perceived as racist & offensive & the article will get u canceled unless u completely revamp it”
Welcome to the 21st century & beyond!
Long time subscriber here - so glad I got to see this! I am a high school English teacher of Special Education students with a variety of disabilities. We use all the Google products at school, and you can bet I will introduce this feature to my students and fellow teachers. Thank you, Dotto!
Love that! let me know how well it works and if there are any unexpected consequences (as there so often are!)
Trying to write has been challenging for me. I can type fairly well but my mistakes and the desire to fix them get in the way of my thought process. I've been using Microsoft dictation lately and it has improved my work flow. Being able to dictate my story lines out, having less errors, going back later and edit with keyboard is great. Haven't tried Google docs yet.
I'm 82....have hand written (and typed) journalings/poetry/observations/essays - for decades! Techno- savy I am not......plus fingers no longer nimble. YOUR info inspires me. (Actually I came across your
RUclips site when searching info about photo scanning). MANY thanks!!!
Having been a typist using fingers for over fifty years, I prefer to type, partly because when I’m writing a book, I like the slower pace, because it gives me a little time to form the sentences, whereas if I’m simply speaking the quality might drop, however I may try voice typing when I need to get something down quickly. Thanks for letting us know.
Using voice dictation might be good for writing dialogue since when you're talking you're writing spoken language.
But the rest of your pros probably should be typed because it's forcing you to think in a written language not a spoken language
I don't know if it was mentioned during this video or the previous one, but apparently, as of now, this doesn't work when you open Google Docs on Firefox but works perfectly well on Google Chrome. So if (like me) you don't see the option under the tools menu, chances are that you're not using Google Chrome.
Thanks Antonis. I have a large project, remembered this video, then couldn't find the tool and my heart sank. I'm on Safari, so I really appreciate the heads up and all the time you and Dotto are going to save me.
I'm not going back to chrome. SO bummer.
@@GeoZero Yes, the page he links to specifically says that this only works in Chrome.
@@GeoZero there are plenty of other Chromium-based browsers out there such as Brave, Vivaldi, Chromium, and arguably the best, Ungoogled Chromium, if you need compatibility with certain tools. I haven’t used Chrome in years and solve this kind of problem using a combination of Ungoogled Chromium and Vivaldi.
That’s your first problem lol
This is a great feature! Especially if one has arthritic hands or any other disability where using the keyboard is difficult or impossible. It might just be the impetus for me to start on an autobiography or other forms of prose which I have been putting off for so long.
Writing poetry with this might be fun too.
The funniest thing happened when I tried this out using English and my German-speaking husband began to speak to me close by. It was hilarious to see how the German speech was being "interpreted" into English words. Silly but so much fun!
When I first used it I didn't think it's any good, but the way you describe it, makes it look way better than I thought.
YAY!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH! As a person with disabilities this is going to be a LIFE saver! I can type fast for others, sure. But I have learned I get too overwhelmed when I want to express myself. I have thoughts but then typing them does not go well. It is very difficult for my Emotional & Logic brain to work together when the issue is personal or has me upset/triggered (which I think is common, tbh).
Then there seems to be a HUGE issue with ADHD and MANY other diagnosis that affect executive function, right?.! I think pandem!c made others see how necessary a tool like this was! It's sooo much easier to THINK to dictate, if I am doing something or just walking around. That is why this is SO AMAZING for myself. I can't wait to share & feel productive!!! I can be doing other tasks/multitask my brain to get my ideas/thoughts on paper! 💛💚💜
Amazing! Reminds me several years ago, I said to my tech support staff that I wanted to try Naturally Speaking because my typing was so bad. My tech rep said not so fast because naturally Speaking was only about 80% effective at the time. I responded that my keyboard was only about 30% effective, so that would be a real gain for me! Everything’s relative! I’ll try Google Docs! Geoff
I had no idea that this was an option. This literally changes everything and it changes my mind about what tools I will use for writing moving forward.
Thanks Steve!
Google has really improved voice typing and it seems much more accurate than Siri!
I have been using while also doing livestreams so that I get a useful transcrition of the narrative from my live stream too. Nice! :-)
I really like voice typing as I find it saves time, and my thoughts flow more freely when dictating into the document. Being able to edit on the is also a game changer. Thanks for sharing your tips.
This is an absolute game changer for me.
Now, I only need to polish my method of writing and I'm set for life.
4:48 - It'll be the accents. The UK has a lot of different accents that make English words sound very different to American words. Try using Googles pronunciation tool and setting it to British English and then American English for words like herb, aluminium and oregano, you'll soon hear the difference and that's before you get into regional accents across the UK.
It’s “different from”.
I doubt this dictation application will correct grammar the way a typist would.
Or-regg-anno or oree-garno. Tomaytoe or tomahto
I agree. I have a very strong New York accent… which the computer can’t understand! I have much more success when I speak Spanish.
I have a nerve condition that causes mayhem with my typing and speed and lets not talk about auto correct.
I have used other speech translators before but the amount of time editing my mistakes, or the programs misinterpretation made them frustrating to use. Also I never knew my speech changes between being fresh and tired.
I appreciate you bringing this video to us and am happy to say it works better than anything I have used before, so..
Thank you indeed.
That is great to hear!
As someone who is currently struggling with wrist pain and thus using dictation this is perfect! Also i always use google docs for school so this is perfect. Thank you
If you are having wrist pain and use the computer a lot, you might have carpal tunnel. My wife just found out that she has it and is scheduled for surgery. It only get worse, not better.
@@PoeLemic I went to get it checked out and I apparently do not have carpal tunnel syndrome. I was told to rest for a month and I feel a bit better. Although I do feel better because I stopped using my hand as much = not doing my hobbies 🤔
I am glad she figured it out!
This is a game changer for when I am writing up notes and report writing, thanks for sharing! Most appreciated.
You may have changed my life and those who need my story thank you for this!!!
First time hearing about this new voice typing, and first time on this YT channel as well. I have to say, I am very impressed with both, I will be checking out voice typing next time I edit a doc, and I wanna try to make it to the webinar next Wednesday, that sounds really cool honestly!
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. While dictation is convenient I agree that it can be a little bit annoying when trying to edit something that you’ve dictated or you want to modify something in the document. I have a spinal injury which affects my neck and both arms with pain and my left arms range of motion. I’m not able to do much these days but typing definitely takes a significant toll on me with the positioning of my arms and neck so this could be extremely useful for those occasions where I do you need to type something out. I’ll definitely be looking in to it a bit more. Thanks.
Long time that I didn't watch your videos, but today I am glad that I saw this Google document voice typing. It is a great tool for people that are acquiering a new language and for my activism. Thanks!
I AM 71 AND YOU ARE A HERO!!! KNOW IT.
This is such an awesome video Steve, thanks for this info! I still do all of my comedy/script writing using a pen and notebooks, but when I bring it into the digital realm to publish final drafts, this will improve my work flow SO MUCH! Awesome content!! Thanks for doing what you do!!
Have you used Voice commanding in Microsoft word online?
Apart from the commands that you've showed, it has even more commands like
- Bold last three words
- Select hello world (selects the words 'hello world' in document)
- Quote last sentence
- Insert a 3 by 4 table
- Go to next paragraph
- Insert numbered list
- Next
- Exit list
- Exit table
- Insert comment this is nice
and so much more...
I remember being able to do that using voice recognition in Windows 7.
Good to know, thanks. I need all the formatting options I can get.
Makes a lot of sense since MS BOUGHT Nuance/Dragon in 2016. BAM! Dictate shows up in MS Office 365 both desktop apps and online MS Office. I've not used my Dragon v15 since this came about in MS 365, and I was a very long time user of Dragon (1993 through all its versions and publishers).
Wow very impressive! Can't wait to see how this evolves
I have a severely dyslectic friend, who - because of that - always procrastinates when it comes to writing. And when she finally does her writing, it costs her loads of time (she has to use multiple spell checkers to deliver a readable text). All of this is quite hindering her business, since she wants to write blogs and has to update patient files.
I shared your video with her.
She is happy. 😁
So thanks! 🙏
This is a huge gamechanger for writing my book. So glad I found your channel!!
I love this! It’s going to be a game changer for me, because I cannot type. My productivity level will increase tremendously, because I won’t have to dread “pecking” a document as I have been doing for years. Thank you so much!!
I regularly use voice typing for creating blog posts and articles. Unfortunately, I find I have to make so many corrections it's only marginally helpful with Google. It regularly changes correct versions of what I said into incorrect ones. I've come to the documentation and can't figure out why it does that. Dragon speaking is better but expensive (I'm using that now}. It also doesn't work well in Google Docs. I usually prefer a plug-in for Google docs called Speech Recognition Sound Writer. Unfortunately, it has fewer editing features.
I am glad your experience with Dragon is good. I found Dragon to be insanely buggy and prone to crash (as in about 80% of the time). I have heard many people review it well, but there is a host of deeply unsatisfied customers out there who take a very dim view of the product and the company (and their lack of customer service). And all that's without mentioning the cost! Pretty sure were mainly in business due to the lack of competition, but that is changing rapidly now.
Uninstall Google app updates. After that you can easily correct rubbish produced by Google voice typing through a pull-down menu. Doesn't work with the updated version.
VERY pleased that this accepts the Australian standard 'full stop' rather than the American 'period'. Just wish the command list would indicate that there are options available.
This is a game changer for me! I have always said I need to buy a handheld recorder and Google Voice will do nicely. The fact editing can be done, "on the fly" as you say, is such a time saving benefit. Thanks for sharing and caring!❤😊👍👍
This is so amazing. I teach ESL for refugees/immigrants. I am also a 'story teller' and teach people to write personal stories using Guided Autobiography. I just knew my students have amazing stories of resilience but lack the English skills to tell them. I wanted to collect stories for a book 'Immigration Stories of Resilience'. Through MUCH trial and error, I came across Voice Typing on Google docs. I have the student dictatate their story in their language and then I use DeepL translation to translate to English. VOILA, I can read their amazing life stories. I did NOT know how to help them punctuate so now, after your video, I do, and I will put the commands into a document into all the languages of my students so they can edit their stories. Thank you so very much!
One simple comment ... you are an awesome guy with "Adequate and required informaton" God Bless you always !! Its really hard to find a pal like you .. .you've got a new subscriber !! Love ... from India ♥
Great content as always. This IS a game changer. Having to deal with post Covid issues like Covid brain fog. I'm a little slower in getting things from thought to text. If I can skip a step and lose the typing I can work so much faster and freer because now it just flows. Thanks for posting this as it is a great help to me.
This is amazing. .. and wait until they integrate this into the translator too!!! Then we can voice type, and have the AI appropriately translate in to all those other languages!
When it comes to using this on my phone, yes. It's essential. I'm more taken aback at how accurate the voice to text technology is. There are some aspects that I hope change, like figuring out names of people. I will dabble a bit more based on what you've educated me on here. I personally love voice to text when it comes to the desktop and Google search bar. Sometimes it just takes too much effort to reach up to the keyboard when surfing the web...
Thank you for this video, it has been a big help to me! This year, I have lost the use of one hand and one eye, due to a health situation. So this has given me back control over the things I needed for communicating with and helping my clients. As well as documenting my studies and work.
What an absolutely amazing free feature this is, I have typed this with just my voice thank you so much this video.
I discovered Doc's voice typing in 2017 when I was doing a Master's thesis. Even back then, it was leaps and bounds better than iOS or anything else that I had available. I dictated most of my thesis at my computer, getting all my thoughts out there and clean it up section by section. It is great.
This is a game-changer.
Many years ago I was certified with IBM's Voice Text Dictation, later called Via Voice.
It was an amazing program, and way ahead of its time.
Any technology like this requires learning and practice. Because of the level of control this technology provides, it is possible to become very efficient.
Further, it is not possible to type as fast as an average person can speak.
My profession was Information Technology, now I am a technical writer. I am a fast typist, however this technology is definitely superior to my typing skills.
Also... There's only a few companies I would trust with developing this technology correctly: IBM and Google.
I also think that another benefit of doing dictation, or voice typing, is that it helps you clarify your thoughts beforehand and actually makes you a better communicator/speaker.
I believe one of the reasons for this is because, when you dictate, you have to really think about what you want to communicate to your audience, in advance, and then ensure that your vocabulary choice and grammar constructs are in line with your message.
I actually think that dictation should be a mandatory skill taught in formative schools to encourage/enhance people’s ability to better communicate their thoughts.
Great video! Thanks for sharing. 🙏🏻
Strange, I get that from typing.
My thought process is completely different between typing and dictation. When I use dictation, I have to stop and think so much more often, so that's definitely something i have to work on. It may be that I have some sort of mental block which prevents me from finishing a phrase, or maybe typing gives me time to "buffer" what I'm trying to say.
Think back to when we write with ink from a pen, that cand not be erased so easily erased and rewritten, even more so back when it was a quill and took significant time to form every stroke. Just writing this sentence I have been very conscious of the amount of changes, insertions, and rewrites I have made. When I stop to think about it, the time it takes me to type is inconsequential compared to the time it takes me to form a sentence I am happy with. The keyboard is not the bottleneck, and in that sense, it is perfectly fine and no changes are likely to be revolutionary. (until the point the computer can read my mind and disentangel what I want to say from the chaos of my thoughts... and at that point I would need to seriously consider if is still MY thoughts, how would I know?)
This is a game changer for writers. It's another great tool for the repertoire.
Paper and pencil, the diagram, the flow chart diagram, recordings and this gives more layers to the writer.
I've been using voice typing for over a year, but you really emphasized a few features I did not know about. For example, I was mainly using it for writing in my native language, taking notes from my reading, etc. But now I think I will start using it for foreign language learning! Thanks Dotto!
As someone that writes a lot of articles for websites this is a pretty big deal - as long as you give yourself some time to get used to it. It can REALLY speed up your workflow and makes "writing" much more enjoyable.
If you’re publishing, how can it be faster to speak type then go over it and thoroughly check it for grammar to avoid embarrassment, than to just type it. I can type faster than he could speak type…
Great review mate!
I'm not sure if this was mention before but the difference in dictation between the US and UK, is how words like 'realize, monetize recognize and apologize' are spelt. UK variant is 'Recognise. Monitise. Apologise. Realise' and the dictation tool spells them accordingly. Hope that helps someone!
But which is correct? The age old question... ;)
Also harbour and colour
This certainly helps Australians wanting to spell correctly!
I've been using Dragon Naturally Speaking for many years now, and that has always allowed me to edit my work as I go. It's very good.
Thanks. Will help save time for my son's schoolwork and my content for work.
Way better than system based dictation.
Sounds amazing and seems to have great potential. I'm a touch typist and a teensy cell phone keyboard drives me crazy trying to type with one or two fingers when its so 2nd nature to use both hands to type. This sounds ideal. Ill give it a try.
Been able to do this on galaxies for about 5 years since the note 8. As long as you are in typing mode, holding down the button and speaking will auto transcribe your words.
There's also been a note to self plug in to the voice recorder that automatically transcribes your note to yourself along with the words for quick searches.
The 3 phase Bixby button was attacked so heavily because of its elegance. It works like a walkie talkie button so it starts and stops exactly when you want and you can use it securely rather than waiting for it to detect a silence.
In busy rooms you can hold the button and it'll switch between the final word if it's unsure and cycle through then you can simple let go. Mix use and text to speak had been part of the note 8 series for 5 years now.
I am honestly quite surprised I haven’t been told about this. I really could’ve used this to help with my flow of writing during my last university essay. I’ll definitely have to try this out. It would have been nice though if this was also a feature in Microsoft Word. I’ve found the system on Word to be rather buggy for voice to text so this one here would have been much better. Thanks for this.
Awesome I will start using this & the great thing is it type in so many languages, I tested at least two & it works faultlessly. Brilliant.
This is so amazing and wonderful! I have thumb arthritis. It hurts so bad when I type. This is wonderful. Thank you.
As someone who was super frustrated with Dragon Naturally Speaking back in the day, I'm eager to try this. But as a writer, I find that speaking taps into a different level of creativity for me if that makes any sense. But I'm going to learn the commands and see if this voice typing and editing helps me to be more productive with less wear and tear on the wrists. Thanks!
I think it takes time to get creatively comfortable using voice. I know the more I do it the easier it becomes
I am so excited to have discovered this new tool. This tool is actually new to me. Where can I go to get a list of all the commands to be more efficient? I'm not that computer savvy and this truly is a major game changer as you said Steve. I look forward to your response as well as all the other great videos you will be sharing with us.
sorry I found them !
I remember back in the Windows XP days I purchased a software called "Dragon Naturally Speaking" and because of Windows 10 I had to fork over another $200 just to dictate in a word document. Now, with Google Docs, the voice typing is so much better!
I remember Dragon as well, and we needed to spend a lot of time training it!
@@dottotech Yes, that's right!
@@dottotech I disagree. DNS in its early iterations did require a fair amount of training to dictate accurately, and you had to learn several, often unintuitive commands. It improved dramatically over the years, and I would still be using it if they had a product for Apple computers. Perhaps Google Docs voice typing has reached a level of accuracy equivalent to DNS.
Also, I have found, and DNS's user manual states, that the major advantage of typing by voice is getting words on the page quickly. By contrast, making corrections by voice is very tedious. Making corrections with the keyboard instead is far more efficient.
@@dottotechit's working only for English
Thank you for making a video on this. I work a desk job and recently was diagnosed with carpal tunnel in both of my hands. I can type very quickly, but it bothers my hands now so this might be a huge help.
Wow! Thank you for this video. I am very much "technically challenged", so a presentation just like this is what I needed. Lol! I have been taking pen to paper in an effort to comprise my memoir, but have been struggling. I think "voice typing" is the answer to my writing issues!
Great video, thank you for sharing 🥳 It's funny that I stumbled over this somewhere, added it to my Watch Later playlist & when I wrote English subtitles for a German interview recently I tried out dictating for the first time & felt like these things exactly were missing for me to actually use my voice more instead of typing everything. Glad I saved this for later 🙌
Thanks there's a difference bewreen UK and US spelling in text. So when you choose the country version the text editor will automatically insert the correct spelling. For example color ( US) and colour (UK).
Nope. At 4:57 he selects English (US) [not UK] and it still shows at 5:41 and yet at 6:05 it spells it "colour" so it is NOT the selection made in Google -> instead it is as he says at 4:55 - that the spelling is determined by what you set in your keyboard settings.
The big plus on this is that there is no software to install. I have been a user for many years of Dragon Naturally Speaking. Once you have used it a while, trained it on your vocabulary and have gotten comfortable with the mode and commands, it truly is a game changer. Microsoft's implementation is really sad in comparison. My former employer locked down all of the company computers a couple of years ago and would not permit me to load Dragon, so I have had to do my compositions on my personal computer, then sneaker-net the finished document to the company computer for publishing via a flash drive. They did relent and allow Microsoft's voice system to be turned on, but I quickly abandoned it because it was too slow, made too many mistakes, andcorrecting it was a nightmare. . Finally something that I can use without all the hassle. Too bad it's not in Gmail, too.
Mr. Miller, this is HR. We need to talk with you about a post you made. -;>)
You kinda can but from google docs and is another new feature recently added. Click @ in docs then click on create an email and when completed you can send it via gmail. Google had the ability to save templates within Gmail but was always klunky and find this a better option. Pair this with text to talk and done deal.
I've found it is much easier and faster to open a prepared template in WORD, type and edit my email text and then cut-and-paste the entire block of finished email into gmail. Much faster, easier to edit and I'm looking forward to incorporating MS version of speech-to-text into the process.
Freshly here. Dude, you TOTALLY ROCK. A thousand thank you's!!!
I am not good at typing and for more poetic when speaking, thus this is a game changer!!! THANK YOU!
This is great. Google Voice Typing is far faster and more accurate than Windows 10 system dictation. HOWEVER - random letter capitalization, with seemingly no rhyme or reason, is pervasive. After using it a great deal, it became apparent to me what Voice Typing is doing. For instance, If you type "against the wind" in any context, you will get "Against the Wind" (Bob Seger, e.g.) every time. Voice Typing is trying to anticipate any popular culture reference -- book titles, movie titles, song/album titles, you name it -- that you might need to capitalize. It does this relentlessly, to the point of being VERY annoying and time-consuming to fix. Who do they think needs this "feature?" I'm flummoxed. If anyone knows how to disable it, please let me know!
Would Google start including random Bob Seger hits in my RUclips if I type "against the wind" in my Goggle Docs? That would be really disturbing.
@@jcrnda as far as I can tell it only happens with voice typing, not actual typing. And it seems to do only the most popular titles, I doubt that deep cuts would be a problem :) try “don’t stop believin”
It's likely not a feature, but a "bug" due to the fact the speech recognition system is drawing on huge Internet language corpuses. That phrase with capitalization is probably more frequent than the frequency of those three words being used consequently, and so the algorithm is simply selecting the word token(s) with the highest probability given the previous words.
Bob Seger FTW. I want the AI to start PLAYING Against the Wind when anyone reads the voice-typed text.
Maybe a voice command like "Hold Formatting" or "No caps" etc something would be good?
Stay gold.
@@dnlmachine4287 I support this feature.
Actually, the dictate feature in MS Word (Microsoft 365) allows you to interact with the keyboard and mouse without disabling the microphone. The auto punctuation is a little wonky, though.
I have word on my Mac Pro with Microsoft 365 so I will try it.
I love it especially for longer documents. I am old school and used to do dictation with a secretary. This is the same. You have to develop a skill to be able to talk, format and visualize in your mind.
Now you can do the jobs that a secretary used to do for you - typing, filing and correcting dictation. That's progress!.
Thanks so much; this is great; I started w the dictation/Voice typing as often arthritis is a pita on a keyboard...as you noted, the keywords-shortcuts are not all available with dictation, and my thoughts flow better speaking aloud than typing anyhoo....
You are appreciated.🤠 God Bless.
I absolutely loved this video 🤩 I am going to start using it in Google Docs straight away. I was also admiring your sign, "No Limit Over 50". My only disappointment is that I seem to have missed your webinar "Why Grey is Great"
We will be doing more, BTW :No Limit over 50" is our book on Baby Boomers looking for work in their 50plus years.
Thank you so much. This is perfect for me. I used dragon speaking naturally years ago but couldn’t keep up with cost of the new versions. I have just started using. Google docs and now need to learn spreadsheets for a business that my wife and I are beginning. I believe that you will help me a lot. Closing with the Princess Bride tag was AWESOME. Be Well and Good Journey Richie
Appears that it may be a very nice to use. Time will tell & thanks for the video.
Sure would be nice if that app would work in "Keep" Cuz I use that a bunch...
If voice typing helps you get ideas out more easily, that's great. :) I think the reason it hasn't taken off, though (and why Google doesn't talk about it much) is that typing is just a more efficient way for most people to work -- especially with predictive text. Saying the word "period" takes less time than typing a period, and I think that's emblematic of the basic problem.
Speech recognition is great for giving your phone or computer commands to execute (e.g., turning on lights, searching the Internet, etc.), but it's hard for me to imagine typing ever being slower than speaking.
I try to write 90 minutes, 4-5 days a week. I dictate two scenes and then edit them for transcription errors. I average 3,000 edited words per session. That means I can typically draft an 80k manuscript (my normal) in around 6 weeks. I can type around 65 wpm, but composition is always much lower than that. For me, dictating is around 30% faster.
This takes me back 20 years when I was experimenting with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, with the same set of commands.
Now, possibly, the AI can recognise the actions better than Dragon, because i had to learn commands back then. Good stuff.
Now waiting for future AI based speech recognition which will allow us to write software. Ha!
Software by AI … it‘s n the pipeline!
I've been fantasizing about this for years, now's the time, thanks.
man this will be a time saver for studying my law , got like 3 textbooks to summaries' this week
I have been using this feature for a while. For some reason, regarding my creativity in writing, the app hasn't surpassed my state when I write out my thoughts or type them out. When that phase comes, then this app would be a game-changer for all of my work, which is heavily type-intensive considering that I'm in the legal profession. Out of the voice typing apps that I've tried, this is one of the most accurate, and I'm not a fan of Google overall.
I can relate. I'm thinking about "state-dependent learning and memory" because most people type material that needs a different voice then their speech, even professional speech in many cases. So, for me, switching gears and somehow speaking the material that I would normally type is hard…as if my fingers have a different style than my mouth. But, like you said, it's probably a matter of practice. I'm thinking also that we have verbal stylings that make it easier for us to talk with very little time to compose what we're going to say. That would make it even more habituated and hard to shift for most(?) people.
@@BobYourell Well said!
Been using dictation for years. The biggest caveat is it's very easy to be overly verbose. Spoken language is much different from written language that's very easy to quote right and quote spoken language.
This can be a real problem for your readers and it's also going to inflate word counts and make editing harder.
Even for myself when I'm just taking notes for playing a D&D game I end up having three paragraphs of text whereas if I hit typed it it probably would have only just been one
It also picks up your little mannerisms or your little idiosyncrasies your little catchphrases that you might say a lot you know like saying things like you know or like.
Thanks for this explanation. It will change things, especially when you split your workflow into punching out text, and only then start formatting. Formatting as you write eats up too much time. Try it, go use voice typing for your main text, then spend some time formatting.
Now the real game changer would be if Voice typing learns your formatting style. Then you could dictate your text, then command it to apply your preferred style.
Thanks to you I just tried this out. Being Deaf and Blind (wear CI and legally blind) I am loving this. if I'm writing something (other then a quick email) I can just write... voice type... while I'm relaxing in my chair. Then later go to computer and then edit. So far it's been accurate in spelling.... unlike spell corrector which is a joke!
In the 80's, we thought by 2000 we wouldn't even need keyboards and mice anymore. We were just gonna be talking to these things. ... Missed that one.
I use this a little, but it's a pain that it only works in Google docs.
I'm a programmer. I sure wish I could have had this in my coding environment.
Well, I am a programmer, have been for 20 years, and I have never found that typing speed was where the bottleneck was! Maybe that's just me :)
As a quadriplegic (with a neutral North American English accent), I find it frustrating to use Siri, Apple Voice Recognition or Google Voice Recognition. The software and reliability fail in comparison to the Dragon Naturally Speaking I used on my PC back in the early 2000’s. DNS actually learned your voice and your speech patterns. I don’t understand why Apple etc… don’t have it so your device only recognizes the voice of the person who’s logged in. I could watch TV, listen to music or have other people speaking, fairly close by, without it getting confused. It’s like we’ve taken a strep backwards.
I remember when the internet first become mainstream back in the 90s, I always wondered when this would become possible, why has it taken so long?
This option is much better for me to write because I’m writing some emotional memories and when I type I have to stop for weeks on end just to process the healing. But this is great because I will be able to get a lot more out and heal quicker. God bless you for sharing this. Thank you
Love it. Its exactly what I was hoping for. I was on the verge of subscribing to an app that would allow me to do exactly what this does. Good job.
I am a retired physician so am used to dictating instead of typing, so I was excited to view this video. However I ran into unexpected problems with what you seemed to think was obvious: My program hears me well enough to type the text I dictate, yet it stubbornly refuses to obey my voice commands. I thought it was the microphone and checked it out. My question is why can my text information be easily transcribed, ie I am being heard, but my voice cannot activate the voice commands to edit my text or move the cursor. when I say "New line". It simply writes"new line".:
I encountered the same issue. So far, I prefer to just type my words.