I’m finding myself going to the Dragon Dictation app on my iPhone more and more these days. Letting my iPhone serve as a speech dictation tool seems so natural since it’s always with me. What seems less natural is Dragon’s price. It’s completely free, though you will see ads.1

As the parent of a newborn, I don’t always get to decide when my hands are free. Dragon lets me get text down so that I can keep my attention on more important handhelds.

Being able to quickly (and surprisingly accurately) dictate a quick email, text, or idea is awesome. I’ve also practically written entire posts by speaking them.2

Once you start thinking in terms of speech transcription, the possibilities are almost endless. You can use the Dragon app to efficiently transfer text from almost any source to your iPhone.

For example, it makes collecting quotations from printed books/paper easy. All I have to do is read the text aloud into Dragon.3 I’ve even used it to transfer text from a PC screen (way faster than spending time trying to figure out how to sync or paste).

Want to be a real voice-to-text ninja? Check out this awesome cheat sheet of spoken command syntax.

  1. I would gladly pay for an ad-free version of Dragon. It’s a powerful productivity app. It should cost something. ↩

  2. It’s pretty amazing what can fall out of your mind in a matter of minutes. You just have to catch it. Thanks to mobile technology, there have never been fewer excuses not to write—regardless of your schedule. ↩

  3. Sadly, I’m doing the same for e-books since they’re as hard to share as a paperback. ↩