Dictate in any app · Email
Gmail has no built-in dictation on desktop, so replying by voice needs a system-level tool. Typally puts your words into Gmail the moment you release the key, in whichever field you left the cursor.
Disclosure: Typally is our product. We have tried to describe what Gmail already does without talking you out of using it.Nothing on the desktop web app. Gmail on Android and iOS inherits the phone keyboard's microphone, which is why people assume the desktop has it too and then hunt the compose window for a button that was never there.
Email is the highest-volume typing most people do, and almost all of it is short. The cost is not any single reply, it is forty replies a day. Dictation changes the economics of the inbox more than it changes the economics of writing.
In practice people use it for: Replies, follow-ups, introductions, the paragraph of context a colleague asked for, and the long overdue email that has been sitting unanswered because typing it felt like a chore.
You do not configure anything in Gmail. The hotkey works wherever your cursor happens to be:
Windows or macOS, then sign in. No card for the free tier.
Text goes wherever Gmail has focus. One click first saves undoing a paragraph in the wrong box.
Say the whole thought, then let go. No time limit.
Gmail's keyboard shortcuts are single letters when enabled, so a stray word landing outside the compose box can archive a thread. Click into the body before you speak.
Typally types straight into the compose window, so a reply costs about as long as saying it out loud. The AI cleanup pass fixes punctuation and removes filler, which is why a dictated first draft is usually already sendable. Your transcript history is stored on your own machine rather than in a company database.
An account manager comes back from lunch to nine emails that each need a real answer. Typed, that is most of an afternoon. Spoken, each reply takes as long as it would to explain the answer to someone standing next to her — about forty seconds — and the inbox is clear before the next meeting.
Say the whole reply in one pass including the sign-off, then read it once before sending. Email is the place where a dictated first draft is usually already the final draft.
Gmail's keyboard shortcuts are single letters when enabled, so a stray word landing outside the compose box can archive a thread. Click into the body before you speak.
No. The mobile apps use the phone keyboard's microphone, but the desktop web app has no dictation of its own. A system-level tool types into the compose window directly.
Yes, if the tool types wherever the cursor is. Click the subject field, dictate, tab down to the body and carry on.
Audio is sent to a speech-to-text service for transcription, so treat it the way you would treat any cloud tool. Typally stores the resulting transcripts on your own machine rather than in a company database.
The free plan gives you 100 minutes a month without a card — enough to find out whether talking beats typing for you.
Also dictate in: Outlook · Slack · Zendesk · see all apps