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Question · Dictation software

When did the major dictation products launch, and which ones stopped?

Dragon Systems unveiled NaturallySpeaking in 1997, and Microsoft bought Nuance, Dragon's developer, in a deal announced in $19.7 billion. The one clearly ended dictation product in the data is Windows Speech Recognition, deprecated in 2023.

Updated October 25, 20263 min read29 cited facts, each traced to its source

Dictation software started on the desktop and moved into operating systems, then into cloud and open models. Dragon Systems introduced DragonDictate in 1990 1, and unveiled NaturallySpeaking in 1997 2. Few products in this record have stopped. The clearest case is Microsoft's Windows Speech Recognition, which Voice Access replaced.

The full timeline holds 48 data points 3 from 42 sources 4. Each row is a dated event from a maker's own page or a news report of record.

Dragon set the template in the 1990s

DragonDictate came first. Dragon Systems said in 1990 1 that it was the first commercially viable typewriter that works by human speech. That "first" is the company's own claim, and the source does not test it against other products of the time.

NaturallySpeaking followed in 1997 2, described as the first general-purpose, large-vocabulary continuous speech recognition product. Other accounts date retail availability to June of that year, so treat April as the unveiling.

Operating systems made dictation a built-in feature

Microsoft's Windows Vista guide, updated in 2007 5, says speech recognition is part of the operating system. The date is the guide's update month, so the feature is that old or older.

Apple and Google followed. System-wide Mac Dictation arrived with OS X Mountain Lion in 2012 6. Android voice typing was announced for Android 4.0 in 2011 7. Google Docs voice typing arrived in 2015 8. Windows 10 got a dictation hotkey in an Insider build in 2017 9, a preview before any public release.

ProductMakerDateKindYear (year)Source
Otter.ai Live AssistOtter.ai2026-07-21Transcription2,026Otter.ai, Inc., 2026 10
SpeechAnalyzer and SpeechTranscriberApple2025-06Speech-to-text API2,025Apple, 2025 11
Nova-3Deepgram2025-02-12Speech model2,025Deepgram, 2025 12
Google Speech-to-Text Chirp 3Google2025-04-11Speech-to-text API2,025Cloud, 2025 13
VoxtralMistral AI2025-07-15Speech model2,025Mistral AI, 2025 14
Google Speech-to-Text chirp_telephonyGoogle2024-01-08Speech-to-text API2,024Cloud, 2025 15
Home Assistant Voice Preview EditionHome Assistant2024-122,024project, 2026 16
Voice AccessMicrosoft2022-09-20Built into an operating system2,022Windows Experience Blog (Microsoft), 2022 17

Showing 8 of 19 rows. See every row in the dataset.

The timeline shows two takeovers and one retirement

Microsoft announced it would acquire Nuance in $19.7 billion 18, and said it had completed the deal on March 4, 2022 19. Microsoft's announcements do not mention Dragon. The link is that Nuance developed it.

The product that stopped is Windows Speech Recognition. Microsoft's list of deprecated features dates its deprecation, and its replacement by Voice Access, to 2023 20. Microsoft's support page then says Voice Access replaced it in the Windows 11 releases of 2024 21. Speech Recognition remains available in older versions of Windows.

ProductMakerDateKindYear (year)Source
OpenAI transcription modelsOpenAI2027-02-26Transcription2,027OpenAI API documentation, 2026 22
Google Assistant (Android)Google2026-08-05Voice assistant2,026Droid Life, 2026 23
Itoheyito2026-01-13Dictation app2,026GitHub, heyito/ito repository (the maker's own repository), 2026 24
Windows Speech RecognitionMicrosoft2024-092,024Microsoft, 2026 21
Windows Speech RecognitionMicrosoft2023-122,023Microsoft, 2026 20
ProductMakerDateKindYear (year)Source
Nuance CommunicationsMicrosoft2022-03-04Other2,022Microsoft, 2022 19
Nuance speech recognitionNuance Communications2021-04-122,021Microsoft, 2021 18
MacSpeech DictateNuance2010-02-16Dictation app2,010Speech Technology Magazine, 2010 25
SpinVoxNuance2009-12-30Transcription2,009Rao, 2009 26

Recent activity is in models and APIs, not apps

In recent years, most dated events are model and API releases. OpenAI released Whisper as open-source software in September 21, 2022 27. Google's Chirp 3 reached general availability on October 13, 2025 28. NVIDIA's Parakeet v3 and Mistral's Voxtral also appear in 2025 29. The chart shows how events are spread across years.

What the dates do and do not measure

The data is a record of dated announcements, not of market size or quality.

  • Announcement is not availability. Several rows are previews, betas or announcements. Siri was called a beta at launch, the Windows hotkey was an Insider preview, and Google Assistant was shown before it reached users.
  • Some dates are months only. Dragon, Windows Speech Recognition and Home Assistant's voice hardware carry a month, not a day.
  • Some dates are calculated or indirect. Amazon Alexa's month is worked out from a press release that says "seven months ago."
  • "First" is usually a vendor claim. Priority statements are not independently tested.
  • Coverage is uneven. A product with a well-kept changelog yields many rows. One without yields few. Fewer rows in a year does not mean less happened.
  • Absence is not proof. A product missing from the discontinued list may still have ended. The data only shows endings that a maker or news report of record dated.

What this means for choosing how to dictate

Check whether your tool is still developed. If you rely on Windows Speech Recognition, Microsoft deprecated it and points to Voice Access, so plan a move. If you use Dragon, the owner has changed, so check the vendor's current support for your platform before you buy.

Built-in tools from Apple, Google and Microsoft are free and usually enough for short text. Apps built on newer models add things the old desktop products lacked, such as many languages and on-device processing. Yap, which we make, is one on-device option for Mac and Windows. See our comparison of products at /market before you decide.

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Evidence

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