16 Slick Tricks for Smarter Android Voice Typing

Remember when the notion of typing with your voice seemed downright revolutionary? ‘Twas a time when Android’s voice input felt futuristic. No more pecking out sentences on the go with the pointy tip of your pointer finger—just tap a microphone icon, speak what’s on your mind, and move on with your day.

The sheen of voice typing may have worn off a little over the years, and being able to talk to type is something most folks now take for granted. But Google’s text-to-speech system on Android is actually far more capable than many of us mere mortals realize. And it’s gained quite a few useful new tricks over the years, too, which shockingly few Homo sapiens seem to have noticed.

In fact, I just stumbled onto one such new capability myself the other day—which then led me down a rabbit hole of exploring all the available Android voice typing options and rediscovering the many ways that system can make my life easier.

Lemme show ya some of the buried—and in some cases just plain forgotten—treasures I’ve found.

Android Voice Typing Tricks: The Universal Options

Before we dive in, two quick but important caveats: First and foremost, your phone’s voice input system is closely connected to your Android keyboard app. Most of the options we’re about to go over are associated with Google’s own Gboard keyboard—which can be installed and used on any Android device but notably is not installed by default on Samsung’s Galaxy gizmos. If you’re using a Samsung device, do yourself a favor and install (and then activate) Gboard. It’ll bring a massive all-around upgrade to your input experience, even outside of the stuff we’re about to go over.

Over time, Google has limited some of the most useful advanced Android voice typing options to its own Pixel devices—seemingly because of the on-device processing and hardware integration those functions require. So we’ll start with the stuff that’ll work anywhere, no matter what kind of device you’ve got in front of you, before progressing to the gems that are available only on a more limited subset of specific Pixel products. Capisce? Capisce. Here we go!

1. Your On-Demand Voice Typing Bar

In the newest Android voice typing twist of all, you can now completely hide your on-screen keyboard and gain back precious screen space whilst typing solely with speech thanks to the recently (and quietly!) rolled out Android voice typing toolbar. Just tap the mic icon in the upper-right corner of Gboard, then tap the double down-arrow icon that appears alongside it.

Yup—that’s the one! And hey, wouldya look at that?

Now you can go about your voice typing without the space-sucking distraction of the big honkin’ keyboard eating up half your screen. Pretty nifty, wouldn’t ya say?

And on a related note…

2. Typing Bar Choices

Once you’re in that new voice typing toolbar mode, try tapping the three-line menu icon within the toolbar and looking for the option to switch between the vertical and horizontal toolbar setups. That can make your on-screen space even more efficient and optimized for whatever you’re doing by putting the voice typing toolbar in a spot that’s especially out of the way for any given interface.

Oh, and one more thing:

3. Drag and Drop Action

In addition to that menu option for moving the toolbar around, you can actually just press and hold your finger onto the Gboard voice typing toolbar and then drag it into all sorts of different positions—vertical and horizontal alike.

Whee!

4. Speedier Speaking

Take two seconds now to speed up your voice typing experience from this moment onward: Just head into Gboard’s settings—by tapping the four-square box in the keyboard’s upper-left corner and then tapping the gear-shaped settings icon in the main menu—and select “Voice typing.” Then, look for the line labeled “Faster voice typing.” See it?

All that’s left is to flip the toggle next to that joggle so that it’s in the on and active position. That’ll cause Gboard to download a local version of the Android speech-to-text engine and then operate much more efficiently as a result, regardless of whether you’re online or off.

5. Spoken Symbols

It may seem obvious, but I’ve been consistently surprised by how many Android-owning animals don’t realize this: Practically any form of punctuation you can think of can also be spoken whilst voice typing on your favorite phone or tablet.

So comma give it a whirl semicolon it really can make your voice-typed text much more polished, professional, and easy to read (even if you’re just sending a text to your Great Aunt Gerty). And really, who wouldn’t want that?

6. Summoned Smiles

In addition to basic punctuation, Android’s Gboard-connected voice typing system also supports summoning of many common emoji symbols. So if you must, try spoken commands such as:

– Smiley face emoji

– Laughing emoji

– Crying emoji

– Heart emoji

– Thumbs-up emoji

– Apple emoji

– Barf emoji

And, a bonus tip: Those last two symbols go together particularly well.

Stay tuned for the Pixel-only possibilities and more slick tricks in the upcoming sections!