Today I want to talk about a piece of software that has completely changed how I work: Wispr Flow. I have tried a lot of voice dictation tools over the years. Windows' built-in voice typing, browser extensions, even programs like Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Some were decent, some were overly limited, and none of them really did what I needed.

Wispr Flow is the closest thing to perfect I have found. It works everywhere on your system. Any text box, any app, any window. I can use it in my browser, in Word, and yes, even right inside Microsoft Access. And the best part is, it does grammar and spell checking in the background before the text even hits the screen. That means you do not have to go back and fix everything afterward. It just works.

I even tried building my own voice dictation system using Google's voice-to-text API. And it worked, sort of. But it was a lot of work, and the results were nowhere near as clean or reliable as what Wispr Flow gives me out of the box.

There is one thing I wish it did better. While it shows you that it's listening with a little visual indicator, it does not show the words as they come in. I personally prefer seeing the text as it's being captured, just to make sure everything is coming through properly. Still, that is a small tradeoff for something that works this well.

If you would like to try Wispr Flow for yourself, they do have a free tier which gives you 2,000 words per week at no charge. Beyond that their Pro subscription is only $12/mo for unlimited use - and believe me, I get a lot of use out of it. I gave it a shot for free, and I liked it enough to pay for the full version.

In full disclosure, I did sign up as an affiliate with them, so I will get a few cents if you decide to sign up. But you know me. I do not recommend anything I do not personally use, and I have been using this myself for a few months now. I absolutely love it. Here's the link if you want to check it out for yourself: Wispr Flow.

Now, this is not quite like the Enterprise computer where you say "Computer, where is Commander Riker?" and it gives you an answer. This is more about turning spoken words into clean, polished text. Think of it more like the captain's log system itself. Speak your log entry, and it is instantly ready for the record. That is what Wispr Flow feels like. Just speak, and your words are captured: clean, correct, and ready to go.

I plan on making a full video on this app in the near future just to show what it can do and how you can integrate it into your Access database. But for now, if you want to check it out, it's real easy to download and install, and it took me two minutes to figure it out, so none of you should have a problem with that.

LLAP/RR

P.S. Drop a comment below if you do decide to check it out and let me know what your thoughts are.

P.P.S. Aside from inserting the links and some formatting (like the bold), I dictated this entire captain's log using Wispr Flow. It was perfect.