Speaking an entry instead of typing it

Sometimes it’s easier to say a thing than to type it — walking, driving, or just at the end of a day when your hands are done.

Tap the microphone in the bar above the keyboard. Recording starts straight away. Talk, and you’ll see the words appear as you go. Tap to finish and the text lands wherever your cursor was.

Where the button is

In the row of icons that sits above the on-screen keyboard, with the scripture and photo buttons.

This means it’s a touch feature. The bar only exists when there’s a software keyboard on screen — so voice is on iPhone and iPad, and not in the Mac app. On an iPad with a Magic Keyboard attached, the bar steps aside too. If you’re looking for a microphone on your Mac, that’s why you can’t find it: there isn’t one yet.

It learns your names

Transcription tends to mangle exactly the words you most want it to get right — the names of people you’re praying for, your church, places that matter to you.

Dayspring feeds the transcriber the proper nouns it’s seen in your own writing, so the names you’ve written before come out spelled the way you spell them. The longer you’ve been writing, the better this gets.

If it’s interrupted

A call, a lock screen, a dropped connection mid-sentence. Dayspring keeps what it had and offers it back to you next time you open the app, rather than throwing away the recording.

What we keep

The audio is transcribed and not kept. What’s stored is the text, in your entry, same as if you’d typed it.