Open source alternatives to Google Speech To Text

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Use a smartphone degoogled It gives many people a lot of satisfaction: being able to do almost anything without using Google software you hate other Big Techs it is precisely one of the aims of the project The Alternatives! Unfortunately, however, there are some applications that are difficult to do without and for which there are often no very good alternatives. It is the case of Android Auto for example, almost irreplaceable for those who are used to using it, or Google's Family Link of which There is no open version. Today we will talk about one of these applications, about Google Speech To Text and some alternatives Open source that we found!

For those who don't know what we're talking about, Google Speech To Text is the Google application for writing using only your voice. It is certainly a very useful application on many occasions and it works very well although unfortunately, like all Google applications, it always has the same terrifying Privacy Policy also allowing a discount on the final price to those who sell off their data for the use of its APIs in the Speech-To-Text cloud service ¹.

Alternatives Open source to Google Speech To Text

For this reason we went looking for alternatives Open source and we found something about it that we wanted to report to you!

FUTO Voice Input

This is perhaps the most complete project and also has a paid part it is also possible to pay outside the Play Store. The installation is very simple and the voice recognition works really well, but remember to install the Italian language. The only major flaw we found is the fact that it doesn't recognize punctuation very well but, other than that, texts are recognized well.

It is available on the Play Store but also on F-Droid but installing theirs first Repositories. Alternatively, you can also download the APK directly from their site.

Sayboard

Another very interesting project to try to replace Google Speech-To-Text. After installing the Italian language the result was good but here too the problem we encountered was above all the lack of recognition of punctuation. Unlike FUTO, in this case the text is recognized immediately while with FUTO the text begins to compose when silence is recognized during the sentence.

The application is not present on the Play Store but you can download it from F-Droid or directly on GitHub.

And on desktop?

We didn't find much but for Linux it's there Nerd Dictation (which he uses Vosk like Sayboard). Open source, but for a fee, it is also there writeout.ai ² which allows you to transcribe any audio file into text. The same goes for Buzz Captions ³ available only for macOS.

1. As a benefit of activation, you get access to discounted pricing.[↩]
2. source code writeout.ai[↩]
3. source code Buzz Captions[↩]

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