How do I dictate text into any app on Windows?

Step by step

1. Install Zack Typing and sign in.
2. Click where the text should go, for example the body of an email or the message field of a browser chat.
3. Press Ctrl+Space and speak. The small recording bar at the top of the screen shows the time and your input level.
4. Press Ctrl+Space again. Zack Typing transcribes the recording and pastes the text at your cursor.

Where exactly does the dictated text go?

Zack Typing pastes into the window that has keyboard focus when the text is ready, the same place your typing would go. Usually that is the window in which you stopped the recording. If you switch to another window during transcription, the text lands there.

Zack Typing never pastes into its own window. If the desktop or Zack Typing has the focus when the text is ready, the text goes to the clipboard and you see “No target window was found. The text is on your clipboard.” Click into the right field and press Ctrl+V.

A recording you start with the microphone button in the Zack Typing window stays in the window. “Copy” puts it on the clipboard, and “Insert” pastes it into the window you were working in before you switched to Zack Typing. If you turn off “Auto-insert after transcription” under “General” → “Insertion”, shortcut dictations are no longer pasted automatically either; you click “Insert” yourself.

Does it work in Word, Outlook, the browser and chat apps?

Zack Typing inserts text the way you would: it puts the text on the clipboard and sends the paste shortcut that fits the window, Ctrl+V, or Shift+Insert for terminals that treat Ctrl+V as input. Anything that accepts pasted text works, for example an email in Outlook or Gmail, a Word document or the message field of a browser chat.

If an app blocks inserted text, you see “The target app blocked insertion. The text is on your clipboard.” If an app ignores the paste, pick another “Insertion method” under “Advanced” → “System and startup”: “Ctrl+V”, “Ctrl+Shift+V”, “Shift+Insert” or “Type directly”, which types the text key by key and leaves the clipboard alone.

If the focused window has no text field, nothing appears there. The text is still in your history, and you can copy it by clicking its title on the recording bar.

How does the text fit into the sentence that is already there?

Turn on “Adapt to surrounding text” under “General” → “Insertion”. Before pasting, Zack Typing reads the text left and right of your cursor and adjusts only the edges of the dictated text: it adds a missing space, drops a doubled punctuation mark at the join, removes the final period when your sentence continues in lowercase and adjusts the capital letter of the first word.

Example: you typed “Thanks for the draft,” and dictate “We will send feedback by Friday.” Zack Typing inserts “we will send feedback by Friday.” with a space in front. Names keep their capital letters; Zack Typing only changes common words such as “we” or “and”.

The check runs on your PC. It works in apps that let Windows read the text around the cursor; elsewhere the text is pasted unchanged. Capital letters are adjusted in German, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian and Turkish.

Related questions

More guides

• How do I start and stop dictation: press once or hold to talk?
• How do I turn spoken words into clean written text?
• How do I set up Zack Typing on Windows?
• What is a good alternative to Windows voice typing (Win+H)?
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