Free voice-to-text solution : Lilyspeech

Voice recognition technology has continued to improve over the years. Today, smart speakers and other applications are able to recognize the words we say aloud.

Is it possible, then, to have a solution for dictating into a word processor? There are a few, but Lilyspeech is a free one that works for Windows owners. It uses the same voice-to-text technology that Google uses with its Chrome browser.

Easy dictation in all word processors

Once you've downloaded the software, you'll be able to select the recognition language (including French, English, Spanish and Portuguese with local variants) and adjust the options, among others, so that dictated text is first displayed in a small window or at the end of the mouse cursor. You'll also be asked to choose the shortcut to initiate speech recognition. By default, it is set to the "Ctrl" and "D" keys, but this can be changed. All you have to do then is speak aloud at a pace similar to that of a newsreader, and let the program enter the sentence(s) into any word processor.

It is also possible to enter specific words into the software's lexicon, be it a proper noun, an expression or a rare technical term, so that they can be recognized when spoken.

The application uses cloud computing for voice conversation. As a result, the software is very light on computing resources, but it does take some time (around 20 to 30 seconds) to put what is dictated into writing. In order to offer its software free of charge, the latter may display a little advertising from time to time. A paid premium version allows advertisers to be removed. Nevertheless, the free version is already a good solution for expressing texts, ideas, etc. orally.

Lilyspeech