Gboard

Gboard is Google's keyboard app for Android phones and tablets and for iPhone. You may also see it called the Google Keyboard. Its voice typing lets you dictate into the text field you are using, instead of tapping out each word.

On Android, the microphone sits at the top of the keyboard

To voice type with Gboard on Android, tap a text field, tap the microphone at the top of the keyboard, and speak when you see "Speak now" ¹. Menus change between Android versions and phone makers, so check these steps against your own screen.

Gboard also accepts voice commands for punctuation and editing. Our question on the commands you can say covers them one by one.

Gboard can recognize speech on the phone without a connection

In 2019 Google moved Gboard voice typing onto the phone with an 80 MB speech recognizer that works even when the phone is offline, first on Pixel phones in American English ². A recognizer that runs on the phone does not need a connection, while a recognizer in the cloud does. Whether your own phone and language work offline is a separate check, so the guide on offline voice typing on a phone walks through it.

On iPhone, Gboard's speech leaves the keyboard and goes to Google

Gboard on iPhone works differently from Gboard on Android. Apple does not let third-party keyboards use the microphone, so Gboard's voice typing runs inside the Gboard app, which is allowed to use it ³. TechCrunch reported this in 2017, and Apple's rules for keyboards can change, so check Apple's current developer documentation before you rely on it.

Google's App Store listing for Gboard says that voice input from the Gboard microphone is sent to Google for transcription ⁴. The listing is the developer's own statement, not a test of the network traffic, so it tells you where the speech goes but not how the app behaves in every case. If you dictate sensitive text, read that line before you choose a keyboard.

Gboard and other voice keyboards solve the same problem differently

Gboard is one of several ways to put speech into a phone. The Google voice typing feature is the Android name for speech input, while Samsung voice input is built into Samsung's own keyboard. A third-party keyboard is a keyboard app from another developer, and it has its own limits on the microphone and the network.

Our question on whether Gboard voice typing works on iPhone walks through the setup, and the guide on dictation on iPhone covers the built-in option that Apple provides.

Related terms

• Google voice typing: the Android speech input that Gboard and other Google features share.
• Speech Services by Google: the Google engine for speech-to-text and text-to-speech on Android.
• Third-party keyboard: a keyboard app from a developer other than your phone's maker.
• Dictation: the general act of speaking words that software writes down.

Guides that cover it

• Voice typing on Android: how to use talk to text
• Offline voice typing on iPhone and Android
• Dictation on iPhone: how to use it
• Voice typing not working on Android: how to fix it