Dragon Dictation

Dragon Dictation currently supports U.S, UK and Australian English, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Taiwan Mandarin, Cantonese, Czech, Korean, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Malaysia, Hebrew, Hungarian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, European and Canadian French, German, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, European and Brazilian Portuguese, Turkish, Romanian, Russian, European and American Spanish, Slovak, Swedish, Standard Arabic, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Thai and Croatian. All Dragon Dictation users are able to easily switch between supported languages as they become available. The recognition accuracy will be better for native speakers of each language.

 *Please note that while Dragon Dictation allows users to toggle between all supported languages, dictating in multiple languages simultaneously is not supported.

There are three ways to obtain Dragon Dictation:

• Download directly to your desktop iTunes™ - If you have iTunes™ installed on your desktop, you can click the Dragon Dictation download button at our website and select "Download directly to desktop iTunes™".
• [AT&T ONLY - Not on iPad™ or iPod™] Send download link using SMS - If you prefer to get the download link using your iPhone™ SMS client, select "Send download link using SMS". After filling in all the mandatory fields, a download link will be texted to your iPhone™. Click on the link and it will take you directly to the Dragon Dictation App store download page. Please note that regular SMS charges may apply if you don't have a valid SMS plan.
• Send download link using Email - If you prefer to get the download link using Email, select "Send download link using Email". After filling in all the mandatory fields, a download link will be emailed to you. From your iPad™, iPhone™ or iPod™ click on the link and it will take you directly to the Dragon Dictation App store download page.

Dragon Dictation is available in US, Canadian, Mexican, UK, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Australian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Swiss, Austrian, Belgium, Netherlands, Norwegian, and Swedish App Stores. For Canadian App Store, Dragon Dictation will use US English spellings, that is, ‘center’ rather than ‘centre’, ‘color’ rather than ‘colour’, etc.

Localization data is used to improve recognition abilities over time by learning to recognize regional accents based on location. However, you have the option to turn off Location Services for Dragon Dictation by going to the device Setting→General→Locations Services→setting Dragon Dictation to off.

Yes. If you want to have punctuation in your dictation results, you can speak them by saying "comma", "period", etc. Some special symbols such as "$", "%" are automatically placed in context. You can also perform some basic text commands by speaking them; for example you can say "New Paragraph" to have a new paragraph in your dictation. Below is a list of commonly used commands and punctuations. 

Commonly used commands:

Commonly used Punctuations

For more information please follow this post.

There are several ways to correct the dictated texts: You can tap on a word to get a drop-down list of alternative suggestions. Or you can tap the keyboard icon on the bottom left corner and use the standard iPhone™ text editing feature.

When you are ready to send the text, tap the icon on the lower right of the screen and select "Email" option. Dragon Dictation will launch your default email client and insert your composed text into a new email message. Currently you cannot specify subject or recipients by voice.

With an upgrade to OS 4.0, the body of the SMS will be populated with the contents of the scratchpad. When you are ready to send text, tap the icon on the lower right of the screen on the iPhone and select "SMS" option. Dragon Dictation will launch the SMS interface and insert your composed text into a new SMS message.

If you have not upgraded to OS 4.0 and you choose to send your dictation as a text message, the Dragon app will save the dictated text to the iPhone clipboard and bring you to the SMS message interface. There you need to create a new text message, choose who to message and then double tap on the input text box on top of the keyboard. You will then be able to paste the contents of the clipboard and send the message.

Dragon Dictation Notes™ is a new feature specifically for iPad™. You can dictate text which can be easily saved, viewed and managed with this Notes feature. For more information visit the How to Use section.

The system adapts to your voice, which increases speech recognition accuracy over time. For best speech recognition, avoid sharing this Dragon application with others on your device since this will skew your personal user profile if it is used extensively by others for dictation. If another user wants to share the application for a prolonged duration, we recommend that you reset the voice profile rather than letting them use your profile. You can do this from Settings → Reset Enrollment → ON. However, you must remember that this will reset your voice profile.

We recommend that you do not use the Reset Enrollment feature if an user is sharing the app for only a few brief dictations. However, this user should be aware that the system is adapted to the primary user’s voice profile, and they may not experience optimal speech recognition accuracy.

We have found that users will get the best experience when they explicitly start and stop the recording. Sometimes it is a matter of time to let yourself get used to the habit of executing the Record→Speak→Done sequence. If you really dislike this experience you can let the system sense the end of your speech. Go into the Settings (Tap the Settings icon from Dragon Dictation 2.0 or open your iPhone™ settings and scroll down to the Dragon Dictation icon if not upgraded to Dragon Dictation 2.0) and turn on the "Detect End-of-speech". This setting should detect when you are done speaking but it will not work as well in very noisy environments. You also might experience cutoffs in cases where you hesitate too long when you dictate.

Yes. The system adapts to your voice over time and creates a unique voice profile to provide better speech recognition accuracy. Making corrections to the errors in the dictated text will also help improve your voice recognition over time. If you want to share your device, refer the next article "Can I share Dragon Dictation on my device?".

Just double tap wherever you want to place the cursor.

Try to speak clearly and in a normal voice. Make sure not to speak too quietly. In very noisy environments the recognition accuracy will suffer. As a rule of thumb if it is too noisy to have a conversation over the phone then it is probably too noisy for speech recognition to work accurately.

Dragon Dictation (FREE) version has a limit of 60 seconds audio recording with one press of the recording button. You can continue to dictate long emails or paragraphs in multiple steps without ever having to close the application. This time limit ensures accuracy & prompt responsiveness from the Dragon server system. We always recommend dictating many short sentences instead of a few long ones. In future versions we will reconsider this time limit.

If your iPhone™ has very limited network bandwidth the application might hang at startup with the splash screen being displayed forever. Please press your iPhone's main button to dismiss the application. Thereafter, use Safari to check your connectivity by loading a website. Once you are in an area with better network coverage, you can restart the application. In the future we will display a message informing you of the limited connectivity.

Make sure you speak in a normal, clear voice. Hold your phone at about 7 inches away from your mouth and speak to the application as if it were a person. Remember that the application only "listens" when "Recording" is displayed, and you can see the VU meter movement while you are speaking. In noisy environments the recognition accuracy will usually suffer. As a rule of thumb if it is too noisy to have a conversation over the phone, then it is probably too noisy for speech recognition to work accurately.

• For best performance, use a wired headset with a microphone like the one which is bundled with the iPhone™ or iPod Touch™.
• If you are not using a headset, you may use the built-in microphone, but please make sure to hold the iPad™ so that the microphone is unobstructed and is close to your mouth, and speak directly into it. The built-in microphone is at the top of the device.
• A little icon on the screen will always show you the location of the microphone, even if you rotate the iPad™.

Dragon Dictation streams audio data to a network server infrastructure. For reasonable performance, a good network or WiFi connection is mandatory. Ensure that you have more than the minimum signal strength with your iPhone™. If in doubt, download a website via the mobile phone's browser and monitor the download speed.

If you couldn't find what you were looking for, our Technical Support staff will be glad to assist you. Please Click Here to contact our team.

*Please note, support is only available in English and please make sure any support inquiries are submitted using only English alphanumeric characters

Yes. Your transcribed texts as well as the result list are sent over the Internet. You need either a WiFi or iPhone™ data connection. Make sure you have internet connectivity before trying to use the application on your iPad™ or iPod touch™.

The iPod™ Touch doesn't have a built in microphone to record your voice. Our application checks availability of a microphone on startup. If you have misplaced the OEM microphone bundled with the headset you can buy an external microphone, some of which provide you the benefit of increased recognition accuracy. Please plug in the microphone, make sure the volume is properly adjusted and restart the application.

The application is supported on iPad™, iPad2™, iPhone™ - 2G, 3G, 3Gs, 4, 4Gs and iPod touch™ - 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation models. To use the Dragon Dictation application, you need at least OS 4.0 and iTunes™ 9.