What it is
A way to dictate a note out loud. The important difference from the usual voice keyboard: recognition happens entirely on your phone. Your voice doesn't go to Google's servers, ours, or anyone else's. It works in airplane mode.
The trade-off: you have to download the language model once.
Languages and models
Supported languages: Russian, English, Spanish, German, Chinese, Hindi (and other Indian languages), Portuguese, French, Arabic (the Arabic pack also includes English, Indonesian, Japanese, Russian, Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese).
Model sizes range from a few dozen megabytes up to about 400 MB. The app always shows the exact size and asks for confirmation before downloading. Wi-Fi is a good idea.
Managing models
Settings → Dictation.
- Download — pick a language and the app shows the size and downloads the model. Progress is shown as a percentage.
- Storage used — the total size of downloaded models is shown in settings.
- Delete — any model can be removed and re-downloaded later. Your notes aren't touched.
Dictation settings
Default language. Which language dictation starts in unless you pick something else.
Automatic punctuation. Adds periods and capitalization in the transcribed text. Usually worth leaving on.
Enhanced punctuation (English and Chinese). A small optional pack that handles punctuation noticeably better than the built-in rules.
Enhanced punctuation (Russian). For Russian, punctuation and formatting are already built into the main recognition model — no extra pack needed.
Numerals as digits. Converts spoken numbers into digits: "twenty-three" → "23". Russian and English come with the rules built in. Chinese has a small optional pack.
Permissions you'll need
- Microphone — required, dictation can't work without it.
- Notifications — optional. Lets you pause and resume dictation from the notification shade without opening the app.
- Unrestricted battery use — optional. Some phones kill background processes aggressively, which cuts dictation off mid-sentence. If that happens to you, allow the app to run unrestricted. If dictation runs fine already, leave it alone — battery life matters more.
The dictation panel
While you're dictating, a control panel appears on screen. It can be collapsed to a small handle so it doesn't cover the text, and expanded again when needed.
If something goes wrong
- "Device too warm". Speech recognition works the CPU hard. If the phone overheats, the app pauses dictation — that's protection, not a bug. Give it a few minutes to cool down.
- Dictation cuts out in the background. See the "unrestricted battery use" permission above.
- Recognition is inaccurate. Try speaking a little slower and closer to the mic, and double-check that the right language is selected.