How do you dictate notes on Android?

To dictate a note on Android, open the note, tap inside its text field, tap Microphone at the top of the Gboard keyboard, and speak when you see Speak now ¹. Gboard's voice typing works in any app where you can type, and Google's own examples are Gmail and Keep ². If you type with the Samsung Keyboard instead, the Gboard steps do not apply, and the guide to talk to text on Samsung Galaxy explains its voice input.

Tap inside the note body before you tap Microphone

Voice typing writes into the field that has the cursor, so the field must be active before you tap Microphone. Tap inside the note's body, not its title. If the words land in the title, move the cursor into the body and tap Microphone again. The Gboard steps follow the same order: tap a text field first, then the microphone ¹.

Allow the microphone once, or the key does nothing

The first time you tap Microphone, Android asks for recording permission. The three choices are While using app, Only this time and Don't allow ³. Google's help explains that While using app allows recording any time you use the app, so you are not asked again for each note. Only this time allows it once. Don't allow blocks voice recording, so the microphone key does nothing until you change that choice.

Notes you record are transcribed a different way on Samsung phones

Dictating into a note is different from turning a recording into text. On a Samsung phone, Samsung Notes can make a transcript of a saved recording. Samsung's steps start with opening the saved recordings list with List, then tapping Speech-to-text to make a transcript of the recording ⁴.

Use that route when you already have a recording and want its words in a note. Use the microphone when you want the words as you speak them. The two routes give different results, so check which one your note needs before you start.

Voice typing works offline on all devices, a 2025 report says

In February 2025, 9to5Google reported that Gboard for Android features offline voice typing on all devices ⁵. That means you can dictate a note without a connection. The report does not say which languages work offline, so check your language before you travel.

Speak the punctuation a note needs, then fix words by voice

Notes often need line breaks. Gboard accepts the phrases New line and New paragraph, along with Period and Comma ⁶. Google warns that punctuation might not be available in every language ⁷. If a phrase does nothing in your language, type the mark yourself and carry on.

To replace a word, touch and hold it, tap Microphone, and say the new word when you see Speak now. These steps are on Google's Gboard help page. For the full list of phrases, see how to dictate punctuation on Android and the entry on spoken punctuation.

Read the note before you rely on it, most of all names and numbers

Dictated notes can contain wrong words. In a controlled test on an iPhone, speech had a corrected error rate of 5.30 percent during entry, against 11.22 percent for the keyboard. But speech left slightly more errors in the final text, with an uncorrected error rate of 1.30 percent against 0.79 percent ⁸. So a note that holds a name, an address or a phone number needs a read before you rely on it.

That test used an iPhone and an earlier speech recognizer, so treat its numbers as a guide, not a measure of your phone. Read your own notes after a few sessions and count the mistakes you find. That tells you more than any study.

If the microphone key is missing or silent, check three settings first

Three settings are the first places to look: the keyboard you type with, the microphone permission and the language. Check them in that order. If the key still does not work, follow the guide to fixing voice typing on Android, which walks through the same checks in more detail.

If the built-in route covers your notes, you do not need another app. Yap, which we make, also offers dictation on phones as well as Mac and Windows. If you are choosing a notes app built around dictation, the question on the best voice to text notes app for Android compares the options.

Related questions and guides

• The guide to voice typing on Android, with every step for Gboard and Samsung.
• Where voice typing is on Android, which explains where the microphone key appears.
• Gboard voice typing commands for the commands that edit text.
• Dictation on phones and tablets, the section that covers this topic.
• The voice typing entry, which defines the term.