How to Get Faster, Better Voice to Text on Pixel Phones

ChatGPT talking slow to a smartphone

Before I dig in here, I’ll mention that although the post title says on Pixel phones, I think the few things I outline below should work on most other current or recent gen Android phones that are at least mid-tier devices. They will work even better on the lat three generations of the Pixel line because they also use Google Assistant for voice typing. I haven’t used an iPhone in many years, so I don’t have an educated guess on whether the same goes on those.

If you’re anything like me and you find yourself doing a lot of note taking on your phone, or using it to quickly fire off longer text messages and emails, then voice to text (which I’m going to abbreviate to V2T for the rest of this post) can be a game changer for speeding up those efforts. After years of practice, I’m a very fast swipe typer on my phones - and even so, voice to text kicks swipe typing’s butt when it’s working well.

By working well I mean that V2T is fast and its accuracy level is great - needing minimal editing when you finish speaking. Here are some of the best ways to make that happen:

• Speak clearly, at a relaxed pace. Just a little focus on pronouncing words clearly goes a long way.

• Create a personal dictionary in Gboard and keep it up to date with words you use often that may not be amongst the most commonly used by everyone (for me, this means a lot of cybersecurity terms). The personal dictionary option is here: Settings > System > Keyboard > On-screen keyboard > Gboard > Dictionary > Personal Dictionary

Android personal dictionary

• Export your personal dictionary - for backup and also so that you can import it if you switch phones or if you are able to use a personal dictionary on another mobile device. You can do this from the Personal Dictionary page in Settings - click on the three dots at the top right, and you’ll see both Import and Export options to tap. The export will generate a .ZIP file and popup a Share menu to send the file via email or save it to a file storage location local on the phone or Google Drive or other cloud storage locations, and more options based on what apps you have installed.

  • Do Not believe what Google has said for years and years about syncing your personal dictionary along with other account features. I have never seen this work and never seen any online forum or Google Support type site that has shown anything other than users pulling their hair out because it doesn’t work.

• Edit and Correct any V2T mistakes. Using a personal dictionary and doing this will help train V2T and increase its accuracy. The most recent example I’ve seen for this in my own use is with the word “guardrails”. V2T rendered this as two separate words the first few times I mentioned it, but after correcting it those few times, now it renders it properly.

• Be creative with outlier, hard words. GenAI is one that I have not been able to get V2T to get to grips with, even after adding it to the personal dictionary, correcting it numerous times, and some big efforts to say it as clearly as possible. V2T almost always wants to render it phonetically, so I got “jhenAi” or “jen ai” and similar. My workaround, that now works very well, is to say each of the first three letters individually - “G E N” and then not worry about AI blending together. This ends up in text perfectly, with even the capitalization correct.

• Be Patient. Some of these things will take a little bit to sink in - but before long you should start to see major improvement.