I recently had a client come to me and ask if he could dictate his emails to his computer; similar to how he does on his iPhone. At first, I thought I would need some specific software, most likely paid. As he uses G-Suite it would also need to work with a web browser. After some research I discovered that windows 10 has an inbuilt way to dictate text, it even works in any text field! It is super simple to activate and I’ll show you how below.

  1. Press the “windows key” and the “H” key at the same time
  2. You will see a bar at the top of the screen asking you to enable the speech setting. Click the link and it will open your settings
  3. Toggle the switch to “On“, then close settings
  4. Now press “windows key” + “H” again and the bar will open, this time it will ask you to select a text field
  5. Select a text field, be it a Word Processor or Browser and press the little microphone on the left of the bar. It will then begin listening for dictation. It will transcribe the text in real time
  6. If you need to bring up the bar again you can simply press “windows key” + “H“. Once initiated it should stay on screen until your pc is restarted or shutdown