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Google Docs, like many of the Google services, is one which sees a number of updates coming through and on a very regular basis. One of the updates which arrived towards the end of last year was voice typing. The update rolled out to the web-based version of Google Docs and as you would expect, brought with it the ability to voice dictate documents. While that is all well and good, there are often a number of issues with voice dictation in general. Speed, being one and the ability to be able to edit being a very big one. However, it seems Google has been working on the latter issue, editing, as they have today announced quite the hefty update to voice typing while using Google Docs.
The update announced today brings with it the ability to edit and format by dictation. This means that when you are now composing a document with Docs, you can simply dictate the editing that you want to include. If you want to insert a table, then saying “insert table” will make it happen. Likewise, “copy”, “highlight”, “insert page break” and so on and so on. At least that is the general idea. It is not currently clear as to how understanding Docs will be if you are trying to actually dictate these terms instead of prompting the editing features, but nevertheless, having the ability to edit while dictating certainly will be of benefit.
For those that do plan to make use of the editing feature, it should be already live for the web-based Google Docs and as such, will be good to go now. To help users get to grips with the new feature, Google has also created a list that you can check out (through the source link below) which details all of the voice editing commands that are available. Of course, being Google, you can simply say “voice commands help” when in Docs to check out the list as well. To further drive home the point of the new feature, Google has also put together a video showcasing how the feature works. You can check out the video for yourself below.