Voice recognition software has come a long way since its inception. It has a wide variety of applications, including voice commands on mobile devices and desktop computers and speech-to-text software. Selecting a speech recognition program depends on you need it for and your budget. We’ve listed a few of our favorites in the following sections.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Nuance Communications, Inc offers what is considered to be the best speech recognition software on the market. The Dragon Naturally Speaking software comes in many versions, starting at $75 for the Home Edition and going up from there. It can do almost anything you tell it to, from placing your mouse cursor to posting on Facebook. It is available for PC and Mac.

Windows Speech Recognition

If you are running Windows Vista or later, speech recognition is included. It can control most aspects of the Windows operating system, and type out documents for you in a word processor. It can detect many languages, including English, French, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Spanish, German, Japanese.

  • How to use the Windows Speech Recognition feature.
  • How to determine the version of Windows on a computer.

Built into many mobile devices including smartphones and tablets, Google’s Voice Search also works with both desktop and laptop computers. The software is free as long as you are using the Google Chrome browser and can vastly speed up your searches.

  • Get Google Chrome for free.
  • See our speech recognition definition for further information and related links.
  • Software help and support.