Question Voice to text

[suobs]

I hate typing on a phone. Sometime in the past year or so I lost the ability (in a practical sense) to use "voice to text" to compose emails or text mesaages etc. on my Asus Zenfone 9 (Android 14). When I say "voice to text" I don't actually know what the app was and assumed it was a standard Google app, part of the phone. In general it worked amazingly well. I accessed voice to text by pressing a microphone button on my screen keyboard.

The voice screen that now pops up has the Google logo.

At some point it stopped working for awhile, then later appeared to have been replaced with a different app from Google, which tends to produce partial gibberish and is virtually useless unless you have a lot of time for editing.

Some examples:

• "Testing testing one two three" produces "Justin testing one two free"
• "When in the course of human events" gives "When in course of human abs olut el y"
• "Android Central rocks" gives me "Introid central sucks"
• "At some point it stopped working for a while then later appeared to have been replaced with a different Google app" gives me "At some points its stop working for a while then later were beer to have been replaced with the differenticle google app s"
• Another attempt with "When in the course of human events" gives me "When in the course of human that hearts"

Is it me or the app? Any way to train it or something? Is there an app I can buy to replace it?

Another problem with the app is it almost consistently doesn't work the first time. First try nearly always gives a message "We didn't catch that. Please try again".

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Laura Knotek]

Have a look here. https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/7394306?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform=Android

Please let us know if it helps.

 

[suobs]

Thanks for your reply! I've been playing with Google Assistant, and while it seems cool it only seems to let me give commands to Google Assistant.

To clarify, all I am trying to do is dictate words and have the phone write them as text while in an app such as Messages, Gmail, or a Word document. For example, if I start a text message, instead of typing the message I used to be able to press the microphone button and say "Are you going to the store question mark" and it would type "Are you going to the store?"

The problem I'm having is that the (Google?) app for this dictation function seems to have changed and the replacement no longer works correctly, see the faulty dictation examples in my previous message.

Hope someone can help. I've tried searching for third-party apps without success.

If I've misunderstood something about Assistant, please let me know.

 

[suobs]

To further clarify, in Google messages if I click in a new text message there is a little keyboard in the lower right. When I click it, I get 2 options for a keyboard.

• The first is English (US) - Gboard. If I select it, I see a basic keyboard with no options for voice-to-text (there's no microphone icon that I can see). I can't find Gboard in my apps so I don't know if there are options I can turn on for voice to text.
  • On a related note, when I try to install Gboard from Play Store, I'm told it's already installed. But again, I can't find the Gboard app on my phone anywhere.
• The second is Google Voice Typing. If I choose it, it lets me dictate the message but gives crazy transcriptions like those in my first message.

So in my original question when I asked "Any way to train it or something?" I was asking if Google Voice Typing can be trained to recognize my voice better. Since I can't find the app on my phone, I don't know if there are training options within the app.

When I ask Google Assistant how to enable Google Voice Typing, it gives instructions that don't match what I see on my phone. For example, the default keyboard (not clear what it is, but apparently it's Gboard) does not have a Settings icon in the upper right.

Bottom line, I feel Google's keyboard and Voice Typing are kind of in disarray and don't quite work.

 

[VidJunky]

Hello, Welcome to Android Central forums. It looks like I'm a few days late to the party on this one. I skimmed through these posts to get an idea of what you got going on.

In your last post it sounds like you still haven't found your microphone, and when you have it gives you unusable text.
I found this link to an thread on the Google Help forum asking "how do I get the microphone back"? It's only 2 years old and looking over the instructions I believe the 3 dots have been replaced with a gear icon. Try these steps.


KM F

Jul 16, 2022



Open your Messages app and open a message thread as if you were going to type a message. Above the keyboard there's some options, including 3 dots. Tap on the 3 dots which should bring up a menu. Tap on Settings. That will bring up another set of options. Tap on Voice typing and enable. Your microphone should now be available.

The source is here;

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/171354828/microphone-missing-from-keyboard-how-do-i-get-it-back?hl=en

There a little discussion and some images in the thread that might be helpful.

Step 2 would be clearing the cache and possibly the data for the GBoard app. If you clear the data you will lose any custom words you've saved, maybe some auto fill stuff but nothing you cannot get back.

Settings>Applications>GBoard>force stop the app>Storage>Clear the cache, you can test at this point or, Clear the data while you're here, and then test.

Did your microphone return?

From here the next thing would be trying to remove the updates. Things can get buggy during updates and something like a missing button could be a bug. Do this in two steps.
First uninstall the updates. So from the app page we navigated to in Settings, use the uninstall button. being a preinstalled app you likely will not be able to uninstall the app but you should be able to uninstall the updates. Now test without the updates.
The second step would be to install the updates, and then test again. If it worked without them you know if you allow them again and it stops working you can go back to the uninstalled version. If it works without them and works with them you don't have to do anything.

Let us know how it went and what you found.

 

[mustang7757]

To further clarify, in Google messages if I click in a new text message there is a little keyboard in the lower right. When I click it, I get 2 options for a keyboard.

• The first is English (US) - Gboard. If I select it, I see a basic keyboard with no options for voice-to-text (there's no microphone icon that I can see). I can't find Gboard in my apps so I don't know if there are options I can turn on for voice to text.
  • On a related note, when I try to install Gboard from Play Store, I'm told it's already installed. But again, I can't find the Gboard app on my phone anywhere.
• The second is Google Voice Typing. If I choose it, it lets me dictate the message but gives crazy transcriptions like those in my first message.

So in my original question when I asked "Any way to train it or something?" I was asking if Google Voice Typing can be trained to recognize my voice better. Since I can't find the app on my phone, I don't know if there are training options within the app.

When I ask Google Assistant how to enable Google Voice Typing, it gives instructions that don't match what I see on my phone. For example, the default keyboard (not clear what it is, but apparently it's Gboard) does not have a Settings icon in the upper right.

Bottom line, I feel Google's keyboard and Voice Typing are kind of in disarray and don't quite work.

Welcome to AC!
Can you give a screenshot of your keyboard?