Stop typing, start talking: How voice dictation changed my workflow

I must admit, the way I interact with my computer has changed drastically over the last few months. As developers, we are used to living on the keyboard. We learn shortcuts, we buy mechanical keyboards, and we pride ourselves on our typing speed.

But recently, I realized something: I am spending less time writing code and more time writing prompts.

Whether I am communicating with Claude, Gemini, GitHub Copilot, or just replying to messages on LinkedIn, the volume of text I need to produce has gone up. That is why I decided to stop typing and start talking.

In fact, the draft for this very post was created using my voice. It is a shift that has made my workflow significantly faster, even if it took me a while to get comfortable with it.

The awkward phase

This isn’t my first attempt at voice control. A couple of years ago, GitHub released GitHub Copilot Voice, which allowed you to code by talking.

It wasn’t for me. Trying to articulate complex code syntax out loud felt unnatural and slower than just typing it out. I gave it a try, but I quickly went back to my keyboard.

The turning point came recently when Andrew Connell (AC) told me he was using a tool called Wispr Flow to handle dictation. He wasn’t using it to write if statements; he was using it to dump thoughts into documents, emails, AI prompts, and more.

I was intrigued. Since December, I decided to make voice my main method of “typing” for long-form text. I started with a generic Whisper wrapper for about a month, and while it was an improvement, I eventually found a tool that fit my workflow perfectly.

Why Handy won me over

I discovered a tool called Handy, and it has become a daily driver for me.

The beauty of Handy lies in its simplicity. Use tools to remove friction, not add to it. Handy starts up when my device boots, and it stays out of the way until I need it.

Here is how that works in practice:

1. I press my global hotkey (for me, it’s Option + R).
2. I start talking.
3. I release the keys when I’m done.
4. Handy transcribes the audio and pastes the text directly into whatever window is in focus.

Under the hood

Handy uses the Parakeet V3 model for transcription, but it has many more. I was pleasantly surprised by the accuracy. English isn’t my native language, so I sometimes worry about an AI understanding my accent. However, it does a really good job.

It even handles my mother tongue, Dutch, although I don’t use it often.

The workflow shift

Don’t get me wrong, this workflow has a specific time and place.

I work from home, which is the ideal environment for this. I can talk to my computer without feeling awkward or annoying people around me. I am definitely not going to use this while working from a coffee shop!

But in the privacy of my home office, it is a game-changer for:

• AI Prompting: Explaining a complex problem to an AI is much faster when you treat it like a conversation.
• Social Media: Replying to comments or scrolling through LinkedIn is effortless when you can just speak your reply.
• Drafting Content: Like this interview/article process.

Is this the future?

As we rely more and more on natural language to interface with technology, voice input feels like the logical next step. It is simply more convenient to say what you want than to type it.

Will keyboards disappear? No! AI is evolving so rapidly, and new tools are being created every single day. Perhaps in the future, the models will anticipate what we want before we even speak. But for right now, swapping my keyboard for a microphone has made me a lot faster.

If you find yourself typing endless paragraphs to your AI assistants, give voice dictation a shot. It might just change how you work.

Resources

• Handy on GitHub
• GitHub Copilot Voice
• Andrew Connell

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