How to voice type in Google Docs

The short answer: To voice type in Google Docs, open your document in Chrome, Edge or Safari, choose Tools > Voice typing, click the microphone and talk. In Chrome, Ctrl+Shift+S (⌘+Shift+S on a Mac) opens it. Docs types your words exactly as you say them. For clean sentences instead of a transcript, use AudioPen's voice typing.

Docs voice typing is built in, and for a line or two it's all you need. The trouble starts with anything longer. It hands back everything you said, including the ums, the false starts and the sentence you began twice. Cleaning up a spoken paragraph can take longer than typing it would have.

So keep the Docs microphone for short notes and lists. When you're drafting a section, a summary or a recap after a meeting, you want sentences, not a transcript to fix. That's the job AudioPen's voice typing does: it cleans up your words, or rewrites them in a style you pick, on their way to the page.

Here's the built-in way to talk into Docs on each device, and the AudioPen way, which cleans up or rewrites what you said before it lands.

AudioPen's voice typing works in Google Docs the way it works in any app with a text field. Put your cursor where the words should go and talk. There's no window to switch to and nothing to paste.

On a Mac or Windows computer there are two ways to use it. Press and hold the hotkey, talk, and let go, and clean, formatted text lands at your cursor. That's the one for a quick line. Double-tap the hotkey, talk, and tap it again, and AudioPen rewrites what you said in the style you picked before it types it in. That's the one for a paragraph. On iPhone, iPad and Android you talk through the AudioPen keyboard or the floating AudioPen bubble.

In Docs, the rewrite is the part that helps most. Talk through a project update the way you'd explain it to a colleague, in whatever order it comes out, and pick a style that suits the document. Use a built-in style, or make your own from a sample of your writing so the draft sounds like you on a good day.

Each dictation lands where your cursor is and in a typing history. It never becomes a note in your AudioPen library. You choose how it transcribes: turn on the offline option in the Mac, Windows, iPhone or Android app and the audio never leaves your device, or use cloud transcription, where the audio isn't saved. The rewrite step runs in the cloud, and nothing from it is stored.

The free plan includes voice typing with a limited number of sessions, and every writing style, including the ones you make. AudioPen Prime makes voice typing unlimited.