How to use speech-to-text on android

This is how you can use android’s speech-to-text to make your note taking, text write ups as seamless as possible.
In this article we’re going to discuss the speech-to-text functionality on android, one that is a utility feature you probably may want to use to enable you write essays more easily.

This feature can be used in any app that you can type a text input in, such as messages,  Gmail, Notes  app and many more. It helps you get your text messages/emails written in a short duration and saves you the time that would have taken to manually type the text o write up.

Although it is enabled by default on every android device, you may need to have Internet connection or you must turn ON offline speech recognition to dictate when there’s no internet connection available for the speech to text to work.To use speech to text on your android smart phone ;

1. Open any app that you can key in inputs from the keyboard as this is part of the default keyboard (Gboard) on android.
2. You have to let the keyboard pop up as if you were going to type text manually.
3. You can identify the speech to text icon on the to right corner of the keyboard. That’s the microphone icon you see on the keyboard. Tap on it to start using your voice to input text.Note : long press the comma(,) key to find the voice input icon if you can’t locate it at the top right corner of the keyboard.

4. This will open the Google speech-to-text system on your android phone for you to dictate text messages and other texts that you’d normally use the keyboard to type.

The voice input you give to the system will automatically be converted into text input and will be written in the text input field. It is important to note that you may want to edit the text after the full conversion has been done to avoid any typos.

You can perform some custom modifications to the default speech to text such as adding your preferred language and blocking offensive words. Here’s how to customize the speech-to-text system to get the most out of it.

Go to Settings > System > Language and input (or Settings > General Management > Language and input on older devices).

You can also control the way the speech-to-text engine responds to indecent language. If a word is detected as foul or offensive, by default that word will appear with asterisks (*). You can control this by toggling Block offensive words on or off.

Speech-to-text will make you productive if used in the right way or environment or Setting. For yu to get the most out of this feature, you should use it in a less noisy environment,  speak slowly and clearly,  you can even speak the punctuations as and when there’s the need and the system will be able to pick that up and interpret it correctly. If you see the need to include a question mark (?) somewhere in your text, just say/speak “question mark” and it’ll be inserted into your write up perfectly.