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Voice typing in JetBrains Rider

Rider is used for .NET and game development, both of which generate heavy documentation. With Typally you hold a hotkey, speak, and the text lands in JetBrains Rider exactly where your cursor was.

We make Typally, so treat this as a vendor's guide. Where JetBrains Rider has a built-in option we say so, including when it is the better choice.
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In short

  • JetBrains Rider's own dictation: None. Voice plugins target navigation rather than composition.
  • What Typally does instead: behaves like a keyboard, so it reaches parts of JetBrains Rider a built-in feature would not.
  • Best used for: xml doc comments

Does JetBrains Rider have built-in dictation?

None. Voice plugins target navigation rather than composition.

Why dictate in JetBrains Rider at all?

Unity projects especially accumulate scripts whose purpose is obvious on the day and cryptic by the next milestone. The comment explaining what a component expects is what stops a designer breaking it.

In practice people use it for: XML doc comments, commit messages, component documentation for Unity scripts, and pull request descriptions.

How to dictate in JetBrains Rider

Setup happens once, outside JetBrains Rider, and then applies to every program on the machine:

1

Download and sign in

Grab the build for your platform and create an account.

2

In JetBrains Rider, click the field before you speak

Text goes wherever JetBrains Rider has focus. One click first saves undoing a paragraph in the wrong box.

3

Press and speak

Hold, talk, release. Long passages are fine.

4

Read it before you move on

Rider's completion is aggressive and reacts to every character. Dictate into comment blocks, the commit dialog or a markdown file.

What Typally adds in JetBrains Rider

Typally types into Rider's comment blocks and commit dialog from the same hotkey you use in the browser and your email client. Its cleanup pass removes spoken filler, so a dictated doc comment reads like documentation rather than a transcript of someone thinking aloud.

What this looks like in practice

A gameplay programmer adds three spoken lines to each of eleven components describing what they expect to find in the scene. The level designers stop filing bugs that turn out to be misconfigured prefabs.

One habit that makes it work better

Document what a script assumes about the scene it lives in. That assumption is invisible in code and is what breaks when someone reorganises a prefab.

What to watch out for in JetBrains Rider

Rider's completion is aggressive and reacts to every character. Dictate into comment blocks, the commit dialog or a markdown file.

Frequently asked questions

Does Rider have dictation?

No built-in feature. A system-level tool types into its text fields.

Is it useful for Unity development?

Yes, for the documentation around scripts — what a component expects and what breaks it.

Does this differ from other JetBrains IDEs?

No. Same editor platform, same behaviour.

Try it in JetBrains Rider

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

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Also dictate in: IntelliJ IDEA · Visual Studio · WebStorm · see all apps