Dictation apps that turn voice to text

Typing and note-taking can require lots of time that many of us don’t have – a problem that can be avoided by getting your hands on one of these great dictation apps for your smartphone and tablet.

Alon Dictaphone is notable for its sleek, professional interface. You can dictate notes and memos swiftly, and record and share important, high-quality sound recordings from your phone or tablet. To save recordings, Alon allows recordings to be uploaded to cloud-based storage such as Dropbox. The app is $4.99 for iOS and $10 for Android.

Dragon Dictation uses its ‘NaturallySpeaking’ software to turn speech into text at a rate that’s up to five times faster than regular typing. Write emails, send tweets and post Facebook statuses all by simply speaking into your smartphone. Dragon Dictation supports a range of languages and is has an editing feature to fix typos. The app is free for iOS and Android.

Dictadroid is for Android shares your recorded files with Google Drive or Dropbox. A further point of note is its access to the external Quicktate service, which will provide professional transcriptions of your audio recordings for a pay-as-you-go price. The app is $3.99.