Type and edit with your voice

You can use your voice to type and edit your document in Google Docs and your speaker notes and captions in Google Slides.

This feature works with the latest versions of:

Chrome
Edge
Safari

When you turn on voice typing or captions, your web browser controls the speech-to-text service. It determines how your speech is processed and then sends the text to Google Docs or Google Slides.

Tip: If this feature is not enabled in your organisation, it may have been turned off by your administrator.

Step 1: Turn on your microphone

To use voice typing or voice commands, your computer's microphone needs to be on and working.

Devices and microphones vary, so check your computer manual for instructions. Typically, microphone settings are in the system settings on a Mac or the control panel on a PC.

Step 2: Use voice typing

Type with your voice

Start voice typing in a document

Check that your microphone works.
Open a document in Google Docs in a supported browser.
Click Tools Voice typing. A microphone box appears.
When you're ready to speak, click the microphone.
Speak clearly, at a normal volume and pace (check below for more information on using punctuation).
When you've finished, click the microphone again.

Start voice typing in Slides speaker notes

Check that your microphone works.
In a Chrome Browser, open a presentation in Google Slides.
Click Tools Dictate speaker notes.
- The speaker notes will open and a microphone box will show.
When you're ready to speak, click the microphone.
Speak clearly, at a normal volume and pace.
- For more information on how to use punctuation, check below.
When you've finished, click the microphone.

Correct mistakes while voice typing

If you make a mistake while you're typing with your voice, you can move your cursor to the mistake and fix it without turning off the microphone.
After you correct the mistake, move the cursor back to where you want to continue.
To find a list of suggestions, right-click words underlined in grey.

Languages that work with voice typing

Voice typing works in these languages and accents:

Afrikaans
Amharic
Arabic
Arabic (Algeria)
Arabic (Bahrain)
Arabic (Egypt)
Arabic (Israel)
Arabic (Jordan)
Arabic (Kuwait)
Arabic (Lebanon)
Arabic (Morocco)
Arabic (Oman)
Arabic (Palestine)
Arabic (Qatar)
Arabic (Saudi Arabia)
Arabic (Tunisia)
Arabic (United Arab Emirates)
Armenian
Azerbaijani
Bahasa Indonesia
Basque
Bengali (Bangladesh)
Bengali (India)
Bulgarian
Catalan
Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Traditional)
Chinese (Hong Kong)
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch English (Australia)
English (Canada)
English (Ghana)
English (India)
English (Ireland)
English (Kenya)
English (New Zealand)
English (Nigeria)
English (Philippines)
English (South Africa)
English (Tanzania)
English (UK)
English (US)
Farsi
Filipino
Finnish
French
Galician
Georgian
German
Greek
Gujarati
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Italian
Italian (Italy)
Italian (Switzerland)
Japanese
Javanese
Kannada
Khmer
Korean
Laotian
Latvian
Lithuanian
Malayalam
Malay
Marathi
Nepali
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese (Brazil)
Portuguese (Portugal)
Romanian
Russian
Slovak
Slovenian
Serbian
Sinhala
Spanish
Spanish (Argentina)
Spanish (Bolivia)
Spanish (Chile)
Spanish (Colombia)
Spanish (Costa Rica)
Spanish (Ecuador)
Spanish (El Salvador)
Spanish (Spain)
Spanish (US)
Spanish (Guatemala)
Spanish (Honduras)
Spanish (Latin America)
Spanish (Mexico)
Spanish (Nicaragua)
Spanish (Panama)
Spanish (Paraguay)
Spanish (Peru)
Spanish (Puerto Rico)
Spanish (Uruguay)
Spanish (Venezuela)
Sundanese
Swahili (Kenya)
Swahili (Tanzania)
Swedish
Tamil (India)
Tamil (Malaysia)
Tamil (Singapore)
Tamil (Sri Lanka)
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Urdu (India)
Urdu (Pakistan)
Vietnamese
Zulu

Add punctuation

You can use different phrases to add punctuation to your text. Punctuation might not be available in every language:

English (UK):

Full stop
Comma
Question mark
Exclamation mark
New line
New paragraph
Colon
Semicolon
Open/close bracket
Open/close quotation mark
Open/close single quotation
Hyphen
Dash
Em-dash
At sign
Hashtag
Forward slash
Backslash
Underscore
Ampersand
Asterisk
Ellipsis
Open/close square bracket
Open/close curly braces

Step 3: Use voice commands

After you start voice typing, you can use commands to edit and format your document. For example, 'Select paragraph', 'Italics', or 'Go to the end of the line'.

Tips:

Voice commands are available only in English. The account language and document language must both be English.
Voice commands are not available in Slides speaker notes.

Select text

To select text, say these commands:

Select [word or phrase]
Select all
Select all matching text
Select list item
Select list items at current level
Select next character
Select next [number] characters
Select last character
Select last [number] characters
Select line
Select next line
Select next [number] lines
Select last line
Select last [number] lines
Select paragraph
Select next paragraph
Select next [number] paragraphs
Select last paragraph
Select last [number] paragraphs
Select word
Select next word
Select next [number] words
Select last word
Select last [number] words
Deselect
Unselect
Select none

Format your document

To format your document, say these commands:

Text formatting

Apply heading [1–6]
Apply normal text
Apply subtitle
Apply title
Bold
Italicise
Italics
Strikethrough
Subscript
Superscript
Underline
Upper case
Title case
Lower case

Text colour and highlighting

Text colour [colour]
Highlight
Highlight [colour]
Background colour [colour]
Remove highlight
Remove background colour

Tip: The colours available are: red, red berry, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, cornflower blue, purple, magenta, black, white and grey. For all colours except black and white, you can add 'light' or 'dark' along with numbers 1-3 (for grey, 1-4), such as 'dark purple 3'. If you say 'highlight' by itself, the highlighting colour is yellow.

Paragraph formatting

Decrease indent
Increase indent
Line spacing [1-100]
Line spacing double
Line spacing single

Alignment

Align centre
Align justified
Align left
Align right
Centre align
Left align
Right align

Columns

Apply 1 column
Apply 2 columns
Apply 3 columns
Column options
Insert column break

Lists

Create bulleted list
Create numbered list
Insert bullet
Insert number

Remove formatting

Clear formatting
Remove formatting
Remove bold
Remove italics
Remove strikethrough
Remove underline

Edit your document

To edit your document, say these commands:

Copy
Cut
Paste
Delete
Delete last word
Delete [word or phrase]
Insert link [then say the URL you want to use]
Copy link
Delete link
Insert table of contents
Delete table of contents
Update table of contents
Insert comment [then say your comment]
Insert bookmark
Insert equation
Insert footer
Insert footnote
Insert header
Insert horizontal line
Insert page break

Tips:

If you say 'Delete' by itself, you delete the word before the cursor.
If you select the text of a URL and say 'Insert link', the selected text becomes a hyperlink.

Add and edit tables

To add and edit tables, say these commands:

Insert table
Insert table [1-20] rows by [1-20] columns
Insert row
Insert column
Insert new column
Insert new column on the left
Insert new row
Insert new row above
Insert new row below
Delete column
Delete row
Delete table
Remove column
Remove row
Remove table
Exit table

Move around your document

To move around your document, say these commands:

Part 1	Part 2	Part 3
Example: Go to	end of	paragraph
Go to Move to	end of start of	paragraph column line row table document
Go to Move to	next previous	character column footnote formatting change heading heading [1-6] image line link list list item misspelling paragraph row table word page
Go Move	forward back	[number] characters [number] words
Go Move	up down	[number] lines [number] paragraphs

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Example:

Go to

end of

paragraph

Go to

Move to

end of

start of

paragraph

column

line

row

table

document

Go to

Move to

character

column

footnote

formatting change

heading

heading [1-6]

image

line

link

list

list item

misspelling

paragraph

row

table

word

page

Move

forward

back

[number] characters

[number] words

Move

down

[number] lines

[number] paragraphs

Scroll

Scroll down
Scroll up

Stop voice typing

To stop voice typing, say 'Stop listening'.

Resume voice typing

To move the cursor to the end of the paragraph and start voice typing again, say 'Resume'.

To move the cursor to the end of a particular word or phrase, say 'Resume with [word or phrase]'.

Here are all the commands you can say to resume voice typing:

Resume
Resume with [word or phrase]
Go to the end of the paragraph
Move to the end of the paragraph
Go to the end of the line
Move to the end of the line
Go to [word]

Commands to open help

To open a list of voice commands in your document, say these commands:

Voice-typing help
Voice commands list
Find all voice commands

Speak (for accessibility)

To use these commands, turn on screen reader support. It's best to wear headphones so the screen reader feedback isn't typed into your document.

Speak cursor location
Speak from cursor location
Speak selection
Speak selection formatting
Speak table row and column headers
Speak table cell location
Speak table column header
Speak table row header

Troubleshoot

If voice typing isn't working, try these steps.

'We're having trouble hearing you'

If you find an error message that says 'We're having trouble hearing you', try the following:

Move to a quiet room.
Plug in an external microphone.
Adjust the input volume on your microphone.

The microphone isn't working

If you can't get the microphone to work on your computer, try the following:

Make sure that the microphone isn't broken.
Check your microphone settings in your computer system preferences.
Check that your microphone is plugged in and is not being used by another application.
Move to a quiet room.
Restart your computer.

Voice commands aren't working

If voice commands aren’t working, try the following:

Speak more slowly and clearly
Pause before and after each command. The text of your command might show in the document for a moment. For example, if you say 'select all', the words 'select all' show up before your text is selected.
The microphone shows a bubble containing the most recent command. Verify that Docs or Slides heard the right command. If not, you can simply say 'Undo'.