FeatherweightThe short answer: click where you want to type, press Windows + H, wait for Listening, and talk. Say “stop listening” when you're done.
Start and stop voice typing
- Click where you want the words to go: an email, a document, a chat, a search box.
- Press the Windows logo key + H. The voice typing bar opens and starts listening by itself.
- Wait for Listening, then talk. The words appear as you speak.
- Say “stop listening” when you're done, or select the microphone button on the bar.
It needs an internet connection, a working microphone and the cursor in a text box. On Windows 10 the same idea is called dictation.
Punctuation and corrections by voice
Say a mark by its name and voice typing writes it:
- “period”, “comma”, “question mark”, “exclamation mark”, “colon”, “semicolon”, “quotation marks” and “hyphen”
- “press Enter”, “backspace” and “tab” to press those keys
- “delete that” or “scratch that” to remove what you just said, and “undo that” to bring it back
- “select that” to select the last thing you said
Change the settings
Open voice typing with Windows + H and select the gear on its bar. There you can turn on automatic punctuation, so it adds commas and periods for you; the voice typing launcher, which offers voice typing when you click in a text box; and a filter for profanity. You can also pick the microphone it listens to.
When a dictation app does more
Voice typing types what you say, as you say it. A dictation app like Featherweight Dictation works the other way round: hold Right Alt, talk, let go, and about a second later the text is typed, finished:
- Ums and uhs are gone, and when you correct yourself (“at five, actually six”) only 6 is typed.
- It's laid out for the app: an email in Outlook or Gmail with its greeting and sign-off on their own lines, one line in Teams or Slack, a numbered list when you count items out, a clean prompt in ChatGPT or Cursor.
- Spoken numbers, times and symbols come out as characters: “half past nine” types 9:30.
- You hold the key only while you talk, so nothing listens in between. Prefer Right Ctrl or Caps Lock? Choose it in the app.
- It's light: 2.3 MB installed, and about 4 MB of memory while it waits.
It needs the internet and costs $19 a month after a free trial of 5 days or 3,000 words, where voice typing is free. Get it from the Microsoft Store, or see all downloads.