The android device comes with so many features it is safe to say it gives you value for your money. One of these features is the ability to input messages and texts without actually touching the keyboard. This is very useful when you cannot reply to a message by directly interacting with your phone. In addition, the number of words that are spoken by an average individual is more than twice what he or she can type on the phone’s keyboard.

One of the best things about using voice input on the Android or as is stated on the Android – Speech to Text feature is that it can be used in any application that requires the use of a keyboard. This implies that you can use the speech to text ability of your Android on your social media apps – WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, etc. and instantly convert your voiced speech into text. It is almost the same thing as voice notes except your android convert it into text without actually sending the recorded message.
This begs the question, how do I activate voice to text on android? Before you can use the speech to text accessibility service, you need to do follow some specific process. These steps are what is used to activate the speech to text ability on your android device. This is because the feature is already active as soon as the device is released from the manufacturer.

  1. Microphone sign
The first thing you need to do in order to use the Speech to Text is looking for the microphone sign on your keyboard. Depending on the android version of your device, you can see the mic symbol as a standalone key on your android device’s keyboard. If you don’t, it is most definitely on the space bar. To access it, you need to long press the space bar until it the keyboard completely vanishes. Not vanish, the keyboard will be replaced by a much bigger microphone symbol.


  1.  Settings
This is the image you would get if you do the first step right. Now you need to tap the settings icon. You need to do two important things there:

 · You need to download the language pack that is specifically for your country. You can do this by tapping on the “Offline speech recognition”. This is because most of the android phone’s speech to text is configured to American English. As an Indian for example, using this data pack will only lead to a huge amount of typographical errors. This is because an Indian does not speak with the same accent an American does. Thus it is very likely the voice recognition will mix words up.

 It is also important to note that not all countries have their language pack available for download. In case you cannot find the language pack for your country, you can simply tap on the ‘settings’ then the ‘Languages option’. From the Language option, you can then select the language pack for your country – though it requires an internet connection to use it.

 · Next, you need to access your Android device’s settings itself. This is where you would choose how fast the speech would be. To do this, simply navigate to your device’s settings. Scroll down to the “Personal” tab, there you would see Accessibility. You can also use the Android Accessibility Suite app for this step. You should then locate the Speech to Text option and select the speed rate and also if you want Google to be the voice recognition or other third party apps etc.

  1. Speak
Once you are done with these steps, you are good to go. Simply find your way back to the messaging app you want to use the voice input for – Social media apps, Browser apps or even the text message app that comes with Android devices. Now tap the microphone icon or tap and hold the space bar. Next thing is to speak.

If you do it right, the image below is what you should get when you do yours. It is important to note that the voice recognition accuracy varies on both the Android device being used and the fluency of the speaker. If the speaker fails to sync with the downloaded Offline speech recognition language pack,

There is no escaping the typographical error that would be in the write-up. As can be seen from the image, I was connected as the language pack of my country was not available offline. On using the English (US) data, I discovered there was a lot of mixed up words even when I was shouting at the top of my voice. But on using the online features of the Speech to Text accessibility service, the accuracy of the voice recognition was greatly improved. In fact, all the words were as precise as I mentioned them.

It is important for you to know that when you are using the speech to text service, you are agreeing to not using punctuation marks! The voice recognition has no provision for this on screen. As fast as it is to use the feature, it becomes incredibly slow when you have to add punctuation marks at every required place. For this reason, it is important to note some voice commands that the Voice input on Android recognize as punctuation marks. Some important voice commands include Period for (.), comma for (,) Enter to create a new paragraph, etc. Please note not all this voice commands work in all devices. For instance, in the device used for this article, only the “Period” command works. The rest is written as texts. I hope this answers how do I activate voice to text on the android question.