A few significant improvements have been made to Google Docs’ voice-typing feature, which enables you to “type” and modify text using only your voice and a microphone as opposed to your hands and a keyboard.
The first is that “most major browsers” will now be able to use the feature. Google’s support page states that it is “only available in Chrome browsers” at the moment. The second improvement is that it will “reduce transcription errors and minimize lost audio during transcription.”
Voice typing has been enabled in Google Docs for more than five years, as noted by 9to5Google, enabling users to type words on the (virtual) page even when their hands are occupied or otherwise unable to do so. Although, as our tutorial demonstrates, you might be better off using a specialised piece of transcribing software in most cases, it can also function as a useful transcription tool in a pinch.
Despite Google’s release stating that the feature will be available on “most major browsers,” it fails to identify which browsers these are. However, “major browsers” would probably also include Safari and Firefox. At the absolute least, we expect that it will now be officially supported in other Chromium-based browsers like Microsoft Edge (where users claim that it hasn’t worked in the past). Google has been approached by us for clarification.
Google states that in addition to the updates coming to Google Docs, speaker notes voice-typed in Google Slides “will now contain automatically produced punctuation.” By the middle of the following month, all users should have access to the improved voice typing functionality.