Dictate in any app · Education
Reference managers store papers; the notes field is where reading becomes research. Typally puts your words into Mendeley the moment you release the key, in whichever field you left the cursor.
Disclosure: Typally is our product. We have tried to describe what Mendeley already does without talking you out of using it.None. Notes and annotations are typed.
Saving a PDF is one click. Recording what it argued and how it relates to your work is a paragraph, so libraries fill with hundreds of unread-feeling papers that were, in fact, read.
In practice people use it for: Paper notes, PDF annotation comments, group discussion, and the running synthesis for a chapter.
You do not configure anything in Mendeley. The hotkey works wherever your cursor happens to be:
Windows or macOS, then sign in. No card for the free tier.
Text goes wherever Mendeley has focus. One click first saves undoing a paragraph in the wrong box.
Hold, talk, release. Long passages are fine.
Mendeley's note fields sync between desktop and web, and long dictated text occasionally lags behind. Give it a moment before closing.
Typally types into Mendeley's note fields and PDF annotation comments, so three sentences per paper — claim, evidence, relevance — becomes a habit rather than an intention. Those three sentences are what turn a reference library into a literature review that is already half written.
A doctoral student adds three spoken sentences to every paper she reads for a year. When it comes to writing the review chapter, the argument is already assembled and she rereads eight papers instead of ninety.
Three spoken sentences per paper — claim, evidence, relevance to your argument — turns a reference library into a literature review in progress.
Mendeley's note fields sync between desktop and web, and long dictated text occasionally lags behind. Give it a moment before closing.
No. Notes and annotations are typed.
Yes. Open the annotation's comment box and dictate into it.
The workflow is the same: the notes field is the valuable part and the one most often empty.
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: Zotero · Overleaf · Obsidian · see all apps