Dictate in any app · Publishing

Voice typing in DEV Community

Developer blogging dies at the draft stage, not the publish button. Typally types what you say straight into DEV Community — hold a key, talk, let go — so you can dictate anywhere DEV Community lets you type.

Written by the team behind Typally. DEV Community's own features are described as accurately as we can — check them yourself before switching anything.
Dictate into DEV Community Free — 100 minutes of dictation every month. No card, no trial countdown.
Try Typally free

In short

  • DEV Community's own dictation: None. The editor is markdown.
  • What Typally does instead: sends keystrokes to whichever window is in front, so DEV Community needs no plugin or setup.
  • Best used for: post drafts

Does DEV Community have built-in dictation?

None. The editor is markdown.

Why dictate in DEV Community at all?

Developers have plenty worth writing about and no appetite for writing it. The post that would help hundreds of people stays a folder of notes because turning notes into prose is the part nobody enjoys.

In practice people use it for: Post drafts, code explanations between snippets, series introductions, and comments on other posts.

How to dictate in DEV Community

Because Typally types at the system level rather than plugging into DEV Community, setup is the same everywhere:

1

Get Typally running

Install, sign in, and it waits in the tray.

2

Open DEV Community and click where you want the text

Make sure DEV Community has the cursor in the intended field; that is the only thing that decides where words appear.

3

Hold, say it, release

Nothing truncates part-way through.

4

Read it before you move on

The editor is markdown, so dictated hashes and backticks become headings and code spans. Speak plain prose.

What Typally adds in DEV Community

Typally types into the DEV editor with custom vocabulary handling library and tool names, so a technical post's prose does not need correcting afterwards. Dictate the explanation, paste the code — that split is what makes technical writing fast.

What this looks like in practice

An engineer with a folder of notes on a debugging saga speaks the narrative in eleven minutes. The post goes up that evening after two years of intending to write it.

One habit that makes it work better

Explain the problem out loud before you paste any code. The narrative between the snippets is the entire value of a technical post.

What to watch out for in DEV Community

The editor is markdown, so dictated hashes and backticks become headings and code spans. Speak plain prose.

Frequently asked questions

Does DEV have dictation?

No. It uses a markdown editor.

What makes a technical post work?

The explanation between the code, not the code. That part is prose and it is the part that gets skipped.

Can I dictate comments?

Yes — comment fields are ordinary markdown inputs.

Try it in DEV Community

Free plan: 100 minutes of dictation a month, no card. Pro is $7.99/month if you want more.

Try Typally free

Also dictate in: Hashnode · Medium · GitHub · beehiiv · see all apps