Dictation is Coming to Chromebooks

Google’s Chrome OS will soon get support for dictation. Currently the only way you can enable this is through extensions. Google Docs supports this feature on all platforms including Chrome OS. On Chromebooks with Google Play Store support, there could be some Android apps as well. However, with this new feature, dictation will become a built-in feature for Chrome OS.

Dictation seems to be landing as an accessibility feature. Here is the description from the code change request:

Support dictation on Chrome OS (initial version/prototype)

– bound to ctrl+alt+s
– each invokation triggers a new dictation session
– sound icon prompts for user to start dictating
– silence triggers dictation completion and recognition result

Test: manual.
Bug: 546373

The bug mentioned in this change request is private. So I do not have any further details or screenshots at this time. However, the interesting thing to note here is the keyboard shortcut.

When this feature is live, users will be able to launch dictation using the keyboard shortcut CTRL + ALT + S. This will most probably require enabling the feature under accessibility settings.

Details are scarce at this moment. However, I will be keeping an eye out for this feature in upcoming Chrome OS updates in Canary and Dev. So, stay tuned to Chrome Story for more! For now, if you are a developer with some extra time, you can dig through the code here. Do not forget to drop me a comment if you find something interesting!