Have you ever wished you could write down every idea in your head, regardless of where you are? Siri can be great to take a quick note or make a quick reminder, but when it comes to long-form text, Siri just doesn't cut the mustard.

If you're tired of typing everything out and would rather use your voice to dictate your text, check out these great apps for transcribing voice to text.

Evernote

Oct 07, 2019  To delete text, you can choose from many delete commands. For example, say “delete that” and Voice Control knows to delete what you just typed. Or say ”Delete all” to delete everything and start over. Voice Control understands contextual cues, so you can seamlessly transition between text dictation and commands. The State Of Dictation Software On Mac In 2020. Unfortunately even in 2020, the market for desktop dictation software for Mac is extremely small. For years the leading solution has been Dragon Dictate Professional for Mac but the developer Nuance dropped a bombshell in October 2018 that it was discontinuing the product. Voice to Text perfectly convert your native speech into text in real time. You can add paragraphs, punctuation marks, and even smileys. You can also listen you text into audio formate. System Requirment. 1.Works On Google Chrome Only 2.Need Internet connection 3.Works on any OS Windows/Mac/Linux. Speaking of dictation features, Braina lets you convert your voice to text in any website and software (e.g. Microsoft Word, Notepad). It supports over 100 languages (English, Spanish, French, Italian, etc.) and accents. It can accurately convert most of the accents and be used by multiple users without the need of separate profiles.

Evernote is a robust note-taking app that has long been recommended for note-taking and document sharing, and best of all, you can use your voice to type.You can share notes, annotate images, and collaborate on notes so that you can be as productive as possible. If you just need a note taker, Evernote's perfect for that. If you need a robust note-taking/presentation making/word processing app for business or school, then Evernote is perfect too.

It may not have all the features PowerPoint or Word have, but it'll certainly get you started. Plus, you can also sync across all of your devices so that you have access to your ideas no matter where you are or what device you're using.

Evernote is free to use, but you can purchase various levels of storage so that you can upload more, use it on an unlimited number of devices, access your notebooks offline, and much more.

Just Press Record

Whether it's a conversation between you and your friends that you want on record or you just want to get some quick thoughts on paper, Just Press Record lets you record anything you want and transcribe it into text.

You can choose to save your files locally or on iCloud so all your devices can access it and there are no recording time limits. Plus, you can even record from your Apple Watch with one tap if you use the Apple Watch complication.

What's really cool about Just Press Record is you can use the built-in microphone on your device or use an external mic hooked up through the lightning port. This makes Just Press Record a great tool for podcasters!

Dragon Anywhere

Nuance Communications has been making their Dragon series of speech-to-text software for years, and they have really done a great job at making it better over time. Dragon Anywhere is the mobile version of its flagship dictation software that has been making desktop users' lives easier.

Not only can you talk to Dragon Anywhere and it will instantly transcribe your words, you can also edit, customize your dictionary, and search through your documents and fill things in, all with the power of your voice.

You can upload all your notes and documents to plenty of cloud storage apps like iCloud or Dropbox making it easy to access all your files across your devices.

The app is free to download, but there is a subscription fee to unlock all the useful features.

Call Recording by NoNotes

Do you take a lot of business calls that you wish you could recall for later? Call Recording by NoNotes will let you record any call and give you the option to have it transcribed.

You can record any and all outgoing or incoming calls and save the audio recordings and even get them transcribed at any time after recording the call.

The app is free to download and will let you record 20 minutes of phone calls for free every month. If you do want to transcribe your calls or record for more time, you'll need to pay for it.

Day One Journal

Free File Convert Software

Journaling is not only a great way for us to reflect on our memories and life events, but it's also handy for notes and other random thoughts that we have throughout the day. Day One is an excellent app for keeping a digital diary for yourself, and it has some useful voice recording features.

With Day One, you can dictate a new entry with just your voice. The speech recognition that is built-in is pretty good, and will do a nice job of transcribing your voice into text for whatever you need to record. There is also the ability to just record audio clips themselves, which is fantastic if you want to remember important audio notes, or perhaps baby's first words.

Day One is free to download and use, but you will get even more out of the app with the Day One Premium. A subscription gets you unlimited journals, unlimited photos, videos, and audio for each entry, unlimited cloud storage, and more.

Transcribe - Speech to Text

Transcribe is a simple app that gets the job done, no matter what situation. Just launch it, start talking, and Transcribe does the rest.

With Transcribe, you get almost-instant Artificial Intelligence transcription, and there's no lag between the speech and the transcription itself. You can transcribe voice memos and even videos, and then export that text transcription into a third-party text editing app. It even allows you to search through transcriptions, sync across multiple devices, and it supports 89 languages.

The free download includes a trial, which allows you to record up to 15 minutes. If you find it useful, you can purchase more recording time through in-app purchases.

Which apps do you use?

Let us know in the comments!

August 2019: Added Day One Journal and Transcribe to the list.

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I listen to podcasts. I watch videos. I watch podcasts of different languages. But more than anything I read and write. I practice languages. That’s just how I roll. And sometimes, my ramblings bring me as far as understanding English meaning of some specific kikuyu translation texts.

Frequently I want to save an audio snippet or video clip for future reference. Sure I could save the source media file, if I had unlimited disk space. But what I usually do is keep a link to the original source and text synopsis of the snippet. That both saves on storage and makes future searches for that particular item simpler.

If you’re like me, you really want the original text more than a synopsis. It take s a bit of extra effort, but I have a nice solution that uses only a Mac and open source software. Read below for instructions on converting an MP3 audio file to a text document.

The Basics of Configuring Your Mac to Transcribe .MP3 Audio

Here’s what you need:

• The original media (.mp3 file, for example)
• Soundflower. Soundflower is an application that creates a virtual audio channel and directs audio input and output to physical or virtual devices.
• Audacity. Audacity is a free application for recording and editing sounds.
• TextEdit.app. TextEdit is the default text editor/word processor that is included in Mac OS X.

Follow the instructions on the developer websites to get all of the software installed and working on your system. Once you have the software installed, the next step is to configure your Mac to use Soundflower for dictation.

• Open System Preferences and click on “Dictation & Speech”
• Select the Dictation tab
• Select “Soundflower (2ch)” as the dictation input source
• Click Dictation to “On”
• Tick the “Use Enhanced Dictation” box

Your Mac is ready for dictation. When dictation is turned on in TextEdit (or a another word processing app), your Mac will transcribe sound from the Soundflower input source.

Getting Your Audio and Text Files Ready

Next, you need to queue up the audio file in Audacity and direct output to Soundflower. For those who are new to Audacity, this will be the trickiest step. But relax, you don’t need to learn much about Audacity beyond deciding what section of sound to play and how to select the audio output from the default speakers to Soundflower.

• Launch Audacity
• Import your audio file into audacity (File–> Import, or simply drag the file into the center of the Audacity screen.)
• Click the play button to give it a listen, then click stop once your confident you have the right sound clip/transcription area.
• Choose Audacity –> Preferences –> Devices. Under playback, choose “Soundflower (2ch)” to switch the output from the onboard speakers to Soundflower. Click “OK”

With Audacity and your sound file queued up, its time to turn your attention to TextEdit.

• Launch TextEdit
• Create a “New Document”
• You may want to add some meta data to the document, such as the podcast name, episode #, publish date and URL, to go along with the key transcript.
• Position the cursor in the file where you want the transcript to appear.

And … Action!

It’s time to start audio playback and dictation transcription. Here both sequence and timing are important:

1. In Audacity, move the scrubber start location 10-15 seconds before the key transcription area.
2. Press “Play.” The scrubber and meters will start moving, though you won’t hear any sound. The audio signal is going to Soundflower instead of to the speakers.
3. Put focus on Text edit and position the cursor where you want the transcription to begin.
4. Select Edit –> Start Dictation. (or use the hot key combination, Fn Fn). A microphone icon with a “Done” button will appear to the left of your document.
5. Text will start appearing in the document. It will likely lag by about 3-5 seconds.
6. After approximately 30 seconds press the “done” button. Transcription will continue until complete.

This is the fun part: watch as transcription happens in real time right in the document window. Look Ma, no hands!

And now you have the original text (and most likely a few errors) as text to save. In the future you can easily search and retrieve the information.

An Excellent Alternative: Google Docs Voice Typing

While the solution above works great for offline work, one alternative with a lot of promise is Google Docs. The Voice Typing feature work much like the dictation service in Mac OS. It has the crowdsourcing advantages and privacy disadvantages of other Google products. If you’re OK with that, I found Voice Typing to do an very good job with accuracy and it can go longer that Mac OS dictation.

To use Google Voice Typing, follow all of the steps above with Soundflower, Dictation preferences and configuring Audacity. Instead of using TextEdit, you’ll want to start the Chrome browser and create a Google Doc. Once you are in document, Select Tools –> Voice typing

Convert Software Free

The user interface and process of starting and stopping transcription is the same as with TextEdit.

Dictation and Transcription Limitations

This process sets you well on you way to the goal of a high fidelity audio transcription. But it will be short of perfect. Here’s what you can do to go from good to perfect:

• Understand that Mac OS dictation transcription works for a maximum of 30 seconds at a time. If you need longer, you may want to use an alternate technology such as Dragon.
• Audio playback needs to start before dictation/transcription begins in TextEdit. TextEdit needs to be in focus for dictation to work. If you set the Audacity scrubber a few seconds ahead of target snippet, you’ll be fine.
• Transcription cannot intuit punctuation. You’ll need to add that after the fact.
• If you have multiple speakers or a noisy background, you may need to complete one additional step of creating a pristine audio file to work from. This can be done by listening to the sound through headphones and speaking the text into an audio recorder. Use the recording of your voice to drive the transcription.