How to Turn On Voice to Text on Android: Gboard, Samsung and Pixel

Android types with your voice out of the box, and the microphone key on the keyboard is the whole trick. Where that key lives, and how clean the text comes out, depends on the phone: plain Android with Gboard, a Galaxy with the Samsung keyboard, or a Pixel, which punctuates for you. Here are the current steps for each, plus how to dictate a note in Keep and an email in Gmail.

Updated September 5, 2026

Turn on voice to text: the part that is the same on every phone

Whichever keyboard you use, dictation starts inside the text field you were about to type in. Nothing is installed and nothing is set up in advance.

1. Open an app with a text field: Messages, Gmail, Keep, a search box in the browser.
2. Tap the field so the keyboard comes up.
3. Tap the microphone icon on the keyboard. On Gboard it sits at the right of the top row; on the Samsung keyboard it is in the bottom left corner of the keyboard (on older One UI versions it lived on the toolbar above the letters).
4. Allow the microphone permission the first time you are asked. Android offers "While using the app", "Only this time" and "Don't allow"; the first one saves you from answering again.
5. Wait for "Speak now", then talk at your normal pace. Tap the microphone again to stop.

If there is no microphone on the keyboard at all, it has been switched off rather than removed, and the next two sections say where the switch is. If it is there but greyed out, dies after one word, or disappeared after a system update, the voice typing not working guide goes through the causes one at a time.

Most Android phones: the Gboard microphone

Gboard is the default keyboard on most non-Samsung phones, and Google treats dictation as a built-in feature rather than an add-on. To check the switch or bring it back: open any text field, tap the gear on the Gboard toolbar, open Voice typing, and turn on Use voice typing. The same screen is reachable from the system settings, though the wording drifts between Android versions. On Android 14 and newer it is Settings, System, Keyboard; on older releases it is Settings, System, Languages and input. From there, On-screen keyboard, Gboard, Voice typing.

Two things on that screen are worth setting while you are in it:

• Faster voice typing, also labelled offline speech recognition, downloads a language pack and runs recognition on the phone itself. Dictation then starts instantly and keeps working on a plane or in a basement.
• Language packs are per language. If you dictate in two, download both packs and add both languages to Gboard, otherwise the keyboard quietly transcribes one of them as nonsense.

Plain Gboard dictation transcribes literally and hands the formatting back to you. Google's own instruction is to speak the punctuation: say "period", "comma", "question mark", "exclamation point", "new line" or "new paragraph" (Type with your voice). There is also a repair trick most people never find: to fix one wrong word, touch and hold it, tap the microphone, and say the replacement.

Galaxy phones: the Samsung keyboard

Galaxy phones ship with Samsung's own keyboard, and Samsung's instruction goes through the system settings rather than the keyboard: Settings, General management, Keyboard list and default, Samsung Keyboard, Voice input (Samsung Support). That screen is also where you choose the engine, because a Galaxy carries two. Samsung voice input works only inside the Samsung keyboard; Google voice typing is the same engine other Android phones use. Below the engine there is an offline voice input section where you install a language pack for dictation without a connection.

Two Samsung specifics catch people out. First, the microphone can vanish from the toolbar after a One UI update, and it is restored on that same Voice input screen, not in the app where you noticed it missing. Second, on recent One UI releases the engine picker has been drifting into the keyboard's own settings, so if your path stops at "Samsung Keyboard" without offering Voice input, look for it inside the keyboard settings themselves.

One more Samsung switch is worth knowing: Settings, General management, Keyboard list and default has a "Keyboard button on navigation bar" toggle. It puts a keyboard key beside the navigation buttons, which is the quickest way to summon the keyboard, and with it the microphone, from anywhere.

Which engine is better? Samsung voice input starts faster and works offline once a pack is installed. Google voice typing recognises more languages and copes better with long sentences. Neither one punctuates for you.

Pixel phones: advanced voice typing

Pixel is the one branch where the phone does the formatting. Advanced voice typing, previously called Assistant voice typing, needs a Pixel 6 or newer, including Fold and Tablet (Gboard Help), and is switched on from the keyboard: tap the gear on the Gboard toolbar, open Voice typing, and turn on Advanced voice typing features.

Two requirements are easy to miss, and either one makes the toggle refuse to appear or refuse to work. The Android System Intelligence app has to be up to date, and your primary Gboard language has to match the phone's system language.

With the feature on, punctuation appears by itself, emoji can be inserted by saying their name, and the text answers to spoken commands: "delete last word", "clear", "send". Google gates the newer editing tricks by model. The "fix it" correction and detailed edits need a Pixel 8 or later, and voice commands for the writing tools need a Pixel 9 or later, with the 9a excluded.

Dictate a note or an email

Short replies are the easy case. The two places where dictation genuinely replaces typing are notes and email, and both have a detail worth knowing.

A note in Google Keep. The plain route is the keyboard: start a new note, tap the body, tap the microphone, talk. Keep also has its own recorder, which is the better one when you are walking and cannot look at the screen. In a new note, tap the plus at the bottom left, choose Recording, then tap Speak. Keep saves the audio clip inside the note and writes out the text of what you said, so the note stays searchable. If you only wanted the words, delete the clip afterwards.

An email in Gmail. Tap Compose, tap into the subject line and dictate it, then tap into the body and dictate that. The two are separate fields, so the microphone stops when you move between them. Paragraphs matter more in email than in chat, so say "new paragraph" where you would otherwise press Enter. And read the draft before sending: a misheard name or number is the one mistake dictation hides well. On a Pixel with advanced voice typing you can finish by saying "send", which is exactly the moment to look at the screen first.

Turning voice typing off

Same screens, opposite direction. On Gboard: keyboard gear, Voice typing, turn off "Use voice typing", and the microphone leaves the toolbar. On a Galaxy: Settings, General management, Keyboard list and default, Samsung Keyboard, Voice input, and switch it off there.

If dictation keeps starting by itself, the cause is usually a key rather than a setting. On some layouts the microphone sits next to the space bar or shares a key with the comma and answers to a long press, and the Samsung keyboard button in the navigation bar behaves the same way. Turning the voice key off in the keyboard settings ends it.

When the raw text is the problem

Android dictation gets the words right and the formatting wrong, and that gap is what dedicated tools sell. Wispr Flow adds a floating microphone that works on top of Gboard or any other keyboard, so your typing setup stays as it is; it punctuates automatically, strips filler words, supports over 100 languages, and gives 2,000 words a week free before the paid tier. CleverType goes the other way and replaces the keyboard entirely, adding voice input alongside grammar correction and tone rewriting. Grammarly Keyboard is worth knowing about, though it checks writing rather than producing it, and only in English. If missing full stops are your main frustration, the punctuation guide compares the options in more detail.