How do you do Hindi voice typing on a computer?

On a Windows 11 computer, Hindi voice typing is built in: Microsoft's list of languages that support Windows 11 voice typing includes Hindi ¹. In Google Docs, voice typing had Hindi on its language list in the December 2020 archived copy of Google's help page ², but that feature worked only in Chrome in that copy ³. For a Mac, we could not confirm Hindi from a page we could read, so check your own settings.

Windows 11 voice typing is the built-in route for Hindi

Hindi is one of the languages on Microsoft's Windows 11 voice typing list. The list also includes Japanese, Korean, Marathi and Italian (Italy) ¹. Bengali and Urdu are not on that list, although Microsoft's Azure Speech table does include Bengali (India) and Urdu (India) ⁴.

Check that Hindi is the language you are speaking before you start, and dictate a short test passage first.

Google Docs listed Hindi in 2020, in Chrome only

Google Docs voice typing is a browser feature. The archived 2020 help page lists Hindi among its languages and accents ², and says the feature was then limited to Chrome ³. Since the page we could read is from 2020, and we could not open Google's current help page, confirm the current browser support and language list in Docs before you rely on it.

The same archived page explains that you add punctuation in voice typing by saying specific phrases ⁵. Test those phrases in Hindi before you rely on them, and type any punctuation they do not produce. Our guide to dictation punctuation in other languages explains the general approach.

On a Mac, confirm Hindi in your own Dictation settings

We could not confirm a Hindi entry in Apple's Mac Dictation list from a page we could read, so do not assume Hindi is there. Open the Dictation settings on your Mac and check the language list for Hindi (India). If it is not there, use Windows or Google Docs for Hindi, or dictate in a language your Mac supports.

Our Mac dictation languages guide explains how to change the language on a Mac, and the guide to dictation languages compares the lists across platforms.

Accuracy is the limit on any computer

Support for a language is not the same as accuracy. On the FLEURS benchmark, Whisper large-v2's error rate was 21.5 percent for Hindi and 4.2 percent for English ^{6 7}. Speakers with some regional accents see more errors. In the LAHAJA study, performance declined for speakers from North-East and South India ⁸.

For a steady workflow, dictate a short test passage before you start a long document, and read it back. The LAHAJA study found that declines were especially large for names and specialized terms ⁸, so check those words first. For how errors are measured, see the glossary entry on word error rate.

For the full picture across Hindi and other Indian languages, read the Hindi voice typing guide. If you want to type in Hindi and then translate the result, see the question on voice typing from Hindi to English.