How do you undo in Google Voice typing?
Google Voice Typing is a free speech recognition service provided by Google. It allows users to dictate text by speaking into a microphone instead of typing on a keyboard. This can be useful for people with mobility limitations or those who want a more hands-free way to enter text on their mobile devices or computers.
Voice typing with Google can be enabled in various Google products and services, such as Gmail, Google Docs, Chrome browser, and more. Wherever there is a microphone icon in Google’s products, users can tap it and start speaking to enter and edit text. Google’s voice recognition technology will transcribe the speech into text in real-time.
Hands-free data entry with Google Voice Typing can save time and effort compared to manual typing. It allows multitasking while dictating and gives users an alternative input method. With the microphone feature readily available across Google’s suite of products, voice typing makes entering text simple and convenient for millions of users.
Why Undo is Useful
The undo feature in Google Voice Typing can be incredibly useful as it prevents having to fully delete and re-dictate text if you make a mistake. According to Google’s Gboard support page, undo allows you to “Remove the correction” when Google Assistant misinterprets something you dictated. This saves you the hassle of having to completely backspace or delete phrases just because a couple words were wrong.
Undoing is much quicker than re-dictating entire sentences or paragraphs. It’s especially handy if you’ve already dictated a large portion of text. The undo function lets you roll back the Voice Typing transcript word-by-word or line-by-line to fix small errors as you go. Overall, having the undo option makes dictation faster, easier, and less frustrating.
Two Ways to Undo
There are two ways to undo text while using Google Voice typing:
Using the Keyboard
The easiest way to undo when voice typing is to use the keyboard shortcut. To undo the last action, press Ctrl+Z (or Cmd+Z on Mac). This will immediately delete the last word or phrase you dictated.
You can continue pressing Ctrl/Cmd+Z to keep undoing your previous dictations. This allows you to quickly undo multiple phrases in a row if you make a mistake or change your mind on wording.
According to Google Support, you can press the ‘?’ key to see a list of all keyboard shortcuts available while using Google Voice Typing [1].
Using the Keyboard
You can use keyboard shortcuts to undo typing actions when using Google Voice typing. On Windows, press ‘Ctrl + Z’ to undo the last action. On Mac, press ‘Command + Z’ to undo the last voice typing action. This keyboard shortcut allows you to quickly undo the last word or sentence transcribed by Google Voice typing.
According to Google Support, “To delete the last word: Say ‘Delete last word.’ To delete the last sentence: Say ‘Clear.'” However, the keyboard shortcut is often faster than using voice commands to undo Google Voice typing. Just press ‘Ctrl + Z’ (Windows) or ‘Command + Z’ (Mac) to efficiently undo your last voice typing action.1
Using the Interface
Another way to undo text in Google Voice typing is to use the undo arrow interface. When voice typing, you’ll see a toolbar appear above the keyboard with various icons. On the left side is an arrow curving to the left – this is the undo button.
To undo the last action when voice typing, simply tap on this arrow icon. Each tap will undo the previous voice typed section. You can tap multiple times to keep undoing actions. According to the Google Support article “Use Google Assistant to type with your voice” (source), this is a quick way to undo the last voice typed section without having to delete it manually.
The undo arrow makes it simple to fix any unintended or incorrect sections that Assistant hears and transcribes incorrectly. Just tap to remove whole sections instantly. You can also redo sections by tapping the curved arrow icon pointing to the right, which is just to the right of the undo arrow.
Undo Multiple Actions
When using Google Voice typing, you can undo multiple steps by repeatedly using the “undo” command. Simply say “undo” repeatedly, and Google Voice will step back through multiple actions, allowing you to undo typing several words or sentences back. This can be very handy if you make a mistake several steps back and need to delete more than just the last word or phrase.
According to Google’s support page, saying “undo” will undo the previous text editing action performed by Google Voice Typing. You can say “undo” multiple times in a row to keep stepping backwards through your editing history to undo multiple changes.
One Reddit user confirms this capability in practice: “I use voice typing all day everyday. You CAN undo multiple steps by just saying ‘undo’ 2 or 3 times.” So feel free to use “undo” as many times as you need to erase multiple unwanted words or lines.
The ability to undo multiple steps makes fixing mistakes with Google Voice typing quick and easy. Just say “undo” repeatedly until you’ve erased the text you didn’t want.
Redo
If you accidentally undo something you didn’t mean to undo while using Google Voice typing, you can redo the action. The redo option allows you to reverse an undo [1].
To redo the last action, simply say “redo” or select the redo arrow in the toolbar. The redo arrow typically appears next to or near the undo arrow. Redoing will reapply the change that was just undone.
You can continue to redo multiple actions sequentially to return to the state you were at before accidentally hitting undo. Redo is useful for quickly fixing small mistakes made while undoing changes in Google Voice typing.
Delete Larger Sections
Google Voice typing allows you to delete more than just your last action. Highlight a section of text and hit delete to erase a larger portion of your document if you made multiple errors in a row or want to remove a whole section. To highlight text, you can say “Select [word or phrase]” to highlight the desired words. Then say “Delete” to remove the highlighted text.
This is useful if Google Voice typing misunderstood you and typed out multiple sentences incorrectly. Rather than undoing one word at a time, you can select whole phrases or paragraphs and delete them at once. Just be careful when deleting larger sections so you don’t accidentally remove text you want to keep.
Editing Alternatives
While undo and redo are useful for making quick changes, they have limitations when you want to make more significant edits. Undo/redo only allow you to step backwards or forwards one action at a time. They also have a limited history that eventually clears itself out.
For larger edits, like rewriting a paragraph or deleting a section, you’re better off using Google Docs’ editing features directly. You can highlight text and rewrite it or use cut/copy/paste to move sections around. Google Docs saves version history, so you can also revert back to previous versions of the document if needed.
So while undo/redo are handy for quick changes, for substantial edits you’ll want to use Google Docs’ robust editing capabilities. You can rewrite, rearrange, and restore previous versions without having to click undo dozens of times.
Learn more about editing in Google Docs: Google Docs: Editing Text
Conclusion
Overall, there are easy ways to undo errors or incorrect words when using Google Voice typing. By using keyboard shortcuts, the interface buttons, or speaking undo commands, you can quickly fix any mistakes that come up during dictation. The most useful options are saying “undo” or pressing Ctrl+Z right after an error occurs. You can also delete larger sections of text by selecting it and saying “delete that” or pressing backspace/delete. While Google Voice typing isn’t perfect, having the ability to easily undo and correct mistakes makes dictating long sections of text more feasible. With practice over time, you’ll likely make fewer errors as Google Voice improves at understanding your particular speech patterns.
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