Some authors like to dictate instead of typing or writing by hand.
I have ideas sometimes when I’m walking, or lying in bed at night, or driving.
Most dictation apps just let you dictate a sentence at a time, or a paragraph, and stop transcribing whenever you pause to think.
Others require a lot of training before they recognize your voice, or do a really bad job at the transcription.
I tried several dozen programs for the PC, and mobile apps, trying to find something that worked.
I needed something that wouldn’t stop transcribing when I stopped to think, that would hear my voice in the car, that would transcribe in the background if I had, say, Google Maps up on the phone screen while driving, that had an easy way to get the transcription into my documents.
Otter.AI is free for up to ten hours of recording a month, works on every device, has a super simple interface, and has a web app so when you’re at your computer, you can just take your dictation notes and copy-and-paste them into any document.
The premium version, which is about $8 a month, has 100 hours of transcription.
The only problem I’ve found with it so far is that it’s not too good with weird names and the free version doesn’t offer an option to add your own words to the vocab list. If you have a lot of specialized vocabulary or, like me, a lot of weird names, you might consider upgrading to the paid plan.