How do I change my Google voice typing?

Google Voice Typing is a speech recognition technology that allows users to dictate text using their voice instead of typing on a keyboard. It can be used to write documents, emails, search queries, and more across various Google products and services. Voice Typing converts speech to text in real-time using advanced machine learning algorithms.

Users may want to customize Google Voice Typing to improve accuracy, change settings based on their preferences, or optimize it for different use cases. For example, users can add punctuation automatically, capitalize words properly, and block offensive words. Customizing Voice Typing can help boost productivity and make dictation an easier, more effective experience.

Access Voice Typing Settings

To access the settings for voice typing in Gboard:

1. Open the Gboard app on your Android device. You can find it in your list of installed apps.

2. Tap the menu icon in the top-left corner (it looks like three horizontal lines).

3. Select “Settings” from the menu.

4. Choose “Voice Typing.”

This will open the voice typing settings menu where you can customize options like language, offline speech recognition, automatic punctuation, and more.

For more information, see the Gboard help article on voice typing.

Change Language

To select the language for Google’s voice typing, first open your Android device’s Settings app. Navigate to System > Languages & input > Virtual keyboard > Google Voice Typing. Here you will see a Languages section where you can add or remove languages for voice typing.

To change your primary voice typing language, tap on the current language and select a new one from the list. You can also tap ‘Add a language’ to select additional languages for voice typing that will be available alongside your main language.

According to Google’s support article Change your language or use multiple languages – Android, you can seamlessly switch between multiple languages when using voice typing. The Google Assistant will automatically detect the language you are speaking.

So in summary, access the Google Voice Typing settings in Android to add, remove or reorder languages. This allows you to customize the voice typing experience to your needs.

Offline Speech Recognition

To enable offline voice typing, you need to download an offline speech recognition package. This allows you to use voice typing even when you don’t have an internet connection. Here are the steps:

On Android, open the Gboard app and go to Settings > Voice typing > Offline speech recognition. Tap on the language you want to download. The package will download and you can then use voice typing offline.¹

On Windows 10, go to Settings > Time & language > Speech. Under Offline speech recognition, click on Download to install the offline package for your language. Once downloaded, you can use voice typing while offline.²

On iOS, offline voice typing is not natively supported yet. You’ll need an internet connection to use voice typing features.

Downloaded offline speech packages allow you to dictate text by speaking even when disconnected from the internet. Just make sure to download the language packs you need before going offline.

Block Offensive Words

By default, Google Voice Typing blocks offensive words and shows them as “*” in the typed text. However, you can toggle this setting off to allow offensive words in your dictated text. Here are the steps to disable offensive word blocking in Google Voice Typing:

On your Android device, open the Settings app and go to System > Languages & Input > Virtual keyboard > Google Voice Typing.

Under “Block offensive words”, toggle the switch to the off position. This will disable the blocking of swear words and profanity in your dictated speech.

Now when you use voice typing, Google will transcribe your speech verbatim without censoring explicit language. Just keep in mind that disabling this filter means you will see the actual offensive words you dictate instead of asterisks.

If you ever want to turn this filter back on, simply return to the “Block offensive words” setting and toggle it on again. You can easily switch it off and on based on your preference.

For more information, see this support page: How to disable Google Voice Typing profanity filter

Hands-Free Voice Typing

One convenient way to use voice typing is through hands-free activation. By enabling “Ok Google” detection, you can start voice typing at any time by saying “Ok Google” followed by your dictation. This allows you to voice type without having to press a button to activate it.

To enable hands-free voice typing, open the Google app and go to Settings > Voice > Voice Match. Turn on “Hey Google” detection, then follow the prompts to record your voice. Once set up, you can say “Ok Google, type a message” to start speaking and see your speech converted instantly into text.

Hands-free voice typing with “Ok Google” allows you to dictate text conveniently without using your hands. This can be useful while multitasking or if you don’t have easy access to a keyboard. Just use your voice to start typing whenever you need.

Automatic Punctuation

Google Voice Typing can automatically add punctuation as you speak to make your dictated text clearer. This feature is enabled by default, but you can toggle it on or off as needed.

To toggle automatic punctuation, open the Google Voice Typing settings and turn “Auto-punctuation” on or off. You can find this under Settings > Google > Voice > Voice Typing. Unchecking this setting will remove automatic punctuation insertion as you dictate (1).

With auto-punctuation enabled, Google Voice Typing will automatically insert commas, periods, question marks and other punctuation symbols where it detects natural pauses while you speak. This can help format your dictated text properly without having to manually add punctuation later.

However, the automatic punctuation feature is not always perfect. You may need to manually correct or add some punctuation marks after reviewing the transcribed text. Turning auto-punctuation off gives you full control to punctuate your dictated text as needed (2).

In summary, the auto-punctuation setting for Google Voice Typing gives you a convenient option to automatically punctuate your speech, while still allowing manual punctuation control if needed.

Capitalization

You can customize the automatic capitalization settings for Google Voice Typing. This allows you to control whether Voice Typing automatically capitalizes the first word of each sentence, names, acronyms, and the pronoun “I.”

To change these settings on Android devices:

Open the Settings app on your device.
Tap on System > Languages & input > Virtual keyboard > Gboard > Text correction.

Under “Auto-capitalization,” you can enable or disable capitalization options like “Capitalize first word” and “Capitalize names.”

On iOS devices, open Settings > General > Keyboard > Enable Auto-Capitalization and toggle options on or off as desired.

Some users have reported Voice Typing no longer capitalizing new sentences properly after updates, so checking these settings periodically can help resolve capitalization issues (source).

Personalization

One way to significantly improve the accuracy of Google’s voice typing is to personalize it to your own voice. Google’s speech recognition technology relies on neural networks that are pretrained on thousands of voices. By training it to recognize your specific voice and speech patterns, you can boost accuracy.

To personalize voice typing, go to Voice Typing settings and select “Improve voice model.” You’ll be prompted to read aloud a series of phrases so Google can analyze your voice. This process only takes a few minutes. According to Google, personalizing voice recognition can reduce errors by up to 30%.

You should also make sure to use the same Google account across devices. This allows Google to learn from your voice on multiple devices, further improving accuracy. Personalizing on mobile and using the same account on desktop can be especially helpful.

Regularly retraining the voice model every few months is also recommended. As your voice changes over time, retraining will ensure accuracy doesn’t deteriorate.

Sources:
https://support.google.com/docs/thread/7944067/optimizing-voice-typing-accuracy-within-google-docs?hl=en
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-accuracy-googles-voice-typing-feature-how-can-improved-hyder

Additional Customizations

Google Voice typing offers additional ways to customize the speech recognition experience beyond just language and punctuation preferences. In the Voice typing settings, you can adjust the following:

Speech rate – Speed up or slow down the rate at which your speech is transcribed.
Accents – Select accent options like US English or British English to improve recognition accuracy.
Block offensive words – Toggle on/off the blocking of potentially offensive words in transcriptions.

Offline speech recognition – Download languages for offline voice typing when internet connectivity is limited.

There are also options to have your voice typing onscreen keyboard match the color theme of your device and to show a floating mic icon when Google is listening for speech input. Exploring all of the customization options allows you to optimize Google Voice typing to your preferences.