Google Improves Voice Typing in Drive and Brings It to Major Browsers

Voice typing in Google Drive will become more accessible and easy to access than ever. According to Alphabet, it is even more precise and fast.

Google keeps improving Drive, its office suite and cloud file storage and sharing service. The company announced on its blog yesterday that it has improved voice typing and editing features in Google Docs or Google Slides presenter comments. The company’s blog claims that “this will reduce transcription errors and minimize audio dropouts.” The icing on the cake, this update will not only benefit Internet users browsing Chrome. Google makes it available to “major browsers”.

Even if Google does not give no technical details as for how they improved voice input, the result is convincing. You can test it yourself by opening Google Drive and clicking New — Google Docs. Then go to Tools — Voice Typing (or type Ctrl + Shift + S). A microphone appears at the top left of the document. Click on it and start dictating your text. You will find that the transcription of the text is precise and fast (not as much, however, as a dedicated app).

Google Drive will offer better voice input and automatic captioning

The automatic captioning of Slides is another very useful function. It will initially only be usable by English-speaking Internet users, but Google will most likely develop it for other languages. It will allowdisplay the presenter’s words in real timewhich will be a great help to members of the audience.

The Mountain View company hopes that this “new update will lead to more inclusive and accessible user interactions within Docs and Slides”. The company has a clear focus on collaboration. Already in November 2022, it made it easy to set expiration dates for files in Drive. While testers can try them out today, the voice input improvements in Google Docs and Google Slides are scheduled to roll out between February 16 and February 21, 2023 to the general public.