Gboard and Win + H

[micky]

I can't find the thread, but somone suggested Gboard for a cellphone spoken keyboard, and I tried it today. It works great. Just talk and it writes! No misspellings. Thanks again.

There are competitors but I don't see the need to try them. This one is free and the only hard part is finding the microphone icon. It's on the virtual keyboard (there is no icon on the homepage.)

Now I don't need to buy a keyboard for my friend I was telling you about, or for myself. Or for a tablet if I get one.

There is also, for Windows, Windows Key + H, which I've used once and it worked great too.

I didnt' try to put in punctuation in Windows, but on t he phone it worked just as supposed to.

[Nick Agostini]

That was probably me who had suggested Gboard & OpenBoard for STT. Here's what I had written where STT eliminates the need for a keyboard.

I looked at that Google article and it suggested the Google GBoard app.

But don't be fooled as Google doesn't mention that other methods exist. For example, I don't have Gboard and I use the OpenBoard keyboard STT. Same with text to speech where you can switch to any number of TTS engines.

[Andy Burns]

I don't *particularly* like talking to devices, even though it may work reasonably well. I like it better in places such as a car where I press a button to let the car (or my phone) "know" I'm going to speak to it, rather than have it constantly listening

I don't like using speech input to devices when other humans are around, if everyone was doing it at the same time, it'd create too much hubbub.

[Mickey D]

I don't know if Gboard listens for "OK Google" (or "Hey Google" nowadays). But the way it's being used, you MUST press the microphone icon to work. Otherwise, the input is from the keyboard (and not from the microphone).

It would be nice to change the default to be the way you don't particularly like (that is, default to the microphone) but I don't think it's possible.

[micky]

Yes, I've had to tap on the microphone symbol which appears on the original virtual keyboard.

Maybe I spend too much time alone, but that's the only time I would be texting. My friend too, who only got a cell phone in March and didn't use it until last week. She's 84, iirc, gets lots of visitors but is still alone most of the time.

[Mickey D]

Since I send SMS by voice to text almost all the time, I tried every trick in this ng to get the OpenBoard or GBoard keyboard to default to the mic.

There are apps which say they do sms by voice but I haven't tried them. ?id=com.gtomato.talkboxhttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.recorder I also tried to get the default to be the speakerphone on calls but failed. But all of this was discussed a dozen times on this newsgroup in the past.

I don't think anyone has solved it yet but if they do, I'd love to have the phone default to speaker mode and the keyboard to default to speech input.

[micky]

Yesterday I sent 3 texts to the same person by Gboard, and she answered so they must have worked. It wasn't automatic in that I had to tap the symbol** on the virtual keyboard but that is really pretty easy.

If the mike was always on, that would be terrible. The voices of people y ou were with, of the radio, of the waitress, would all be filling the phone with text you would have to erase. That would only be when you tapped a text field, so I guess it wouldnt' be so bad.

**Should I call it an icon? I didn't because it's not sitting by itself.

I wanted that too, and found one app that said it did it. But it had a low rating and didn't work for me.

[Mickey D]

It has been my experience, like yours - that you have to tap the microphone symbol on the Gboard or OpenBoard keyboard to get the STT to transcribe.

I think the Gboard requires the Internet but I think OpenBoard is offline.

What I want is the mic only goes on when I start to text someone.

It's one of the "symbols" on the keyboards that have voice to text options.

For years I've wanted the phone to default to the speakerphone for me. What app was that which you found so I can test automatic speakerphone?

[micky]

Yeah, that's more emportant that the texting mike to go on automatically, because when you answer a call, the other person starts talking and you dont' know what he said. If it's a recording, you can't get him to repeat it.

Sorry, I don't remember and it doesn't make an icon on the screen.

I just searched for speaker phone in the app store, but looking now I don't find anything familiar, and none of of the 11 claim to do this.

The app store webpage was ruined about a month ago. For example

'm reading that but it doesn't say what it's supposed to do. None of them give enough details anymore. Why did they screw it up?

[micky]

The microphone symbol was right there for texting, but today when I tried to use the Xiaomi web browser, the keyboard had a line with .com .org .gov. .edu. However swiping that line to the left (or maybe the right) made some other symbols appear including the microphone.