The following list presents notable speech recognition software engines with a brief synopsis of characteristics.
Macintosh
Cross-platform web apps based on Chrome
The following list presents notable speech recognition software that operate in a Chrome browser as web apps. They make use of HTML5 Web-Speech-API.[2]
Mobile devices and smartphones
Many mobile phone handsets, including feature phones and smartphones such as iPhones and BlackBerrys, have basic dial-by-voice features built in. Many third-party apps have implemented natural-language speech recognition support, including:
Windows
Windows built-in speech recognition
The Windows Speech Recognition version 8.0 by Microsoft comes built into Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10. Speech Recognition is available only in English, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese and only in the corresponding version of Windows; meaning you cannot use the speech recognition engine in one language if you use a version of Windows in another language. Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 8 Pro allow you to change the system language, and therefore change which speech engine is available. Windows Speech Recognition evolved into Cortana (software), a personal assistant included in Windows 10.
Windows 7, 8, 10, 11 third-party speech recognition
Braina – Dictate into third party software and websites,[4] fill web forms and execute vocal commands.[5]
Tazti – Create speech command profiles to play PC games and control applications – programs. Create speech commands to open files, folders, webpages, applications. Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 versions.[6]
Voice Finger – software that improves the Windows speech recognition system by adding several extensions to it. The software enables controlling the mouse and the keyboard by only using the voice. It is especially useful for aiding users to overcome disabilities or to heal from computer injuries.
Microsoft Speech API
The first version of the Microsoft Speech API was released for Windows NT 3.51 and Windows 95 in 1995, it was then part of Windows up to Windows Vista. This initial version already contained Direct Speech Recognition and Direct Text To Speech APIs which applications could use to directly control engines, as well as simplified 'higher-level' Voice Command and Voice Talk APIs. Speech recognition functionality included as part of Microsoft Office and on Tablet PCs running Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. It can also be downloaded as part of the Speech SDK 5.1 for Windows applications, but since that is aimed at developers building speech applications, the pure SDK form lacks any user interface (numerous applications were available), and thus is unsuitable for end users.
Built-in software
Microsoft Kinect includes built-in software which allows speech recognition of commands.
Older generations of Nokia phones like Nokia N Series (before using Windows 7 mobile technology) used speech-recognition with family names from contact list and a few commands.
Mozilla DeepSpeech was[10] developing an open-source Speech-To-Text engine based on Baidu's deep speech research paper.[11]
Weesper Neon Flow – professional voice-dictation software that provides offline speech-to-text processing on macOS and Windows using local AI models. It is not open source and offers a paid subscription after a 15‑day free trial.[12]
Vocalinux – open-source speech transcription software for Linux.[13]
Discontinued software
IBM VoiceType (formerly IBM Personal Dictation System)
IBM ViaVoice – Embedded version still maintained by IBM.[14] No longer supported for versions above Windows Vista.[15] Untested above macOS 10.4 or on Macintoshes with an Intel chipset.[16]
Quack.com; acquired by AOL; the name has now been reused for an iPad search app.
↑"Web Speech API Specification". dvcs.w3.org. Archived from the original on 2016-06-21.
↑Orlowski, Andrew. "Total recog: British AI makes universal speech breakthrough". The Register. Situation Publishing. Retrieved 17 May 2018.
↑"Speech Recognition Software for Windows PC – Braina". www.brainasoft.com. Archived from the original on 2015-04-07.
↑"Dynamic Faceting-List of Most 57 Speech Recognition SWs and Web Services". Archived from the original on February 13, 2019. Retrieved February 23, 2019.
↑O'Neill, Mark (2013-11-06). "Control your PC with these 5 speech recognition programs". PC World. Archived from the original on 2014-01-01. Retrieved 2013-12-30.
↑"Interactive Voice Response". Genesys. Archived from the original on 2016-10-14.
↑"Janus Recognition Toolkit (JRTk) Official Homepage". KIT. Retrieved 2025-11-28.
↑Lavie, A.; Waibel, A.; Levin, L.; Finke, M.; Gates, D.; Gavalda, M.; Zeppenfeld, T.; Zhan, Puming (1 April 1997). "Janus-III: speech-to-speech translation in multiple languages". 1997 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. Vol.1. IEEE Xplore. pp.99–102. CiteSeerX10.1.1.36.6967. doi:10.1109/ICASSP.1997.599557. ISBN978-0-8186-7919-3. S2CID1514209.
↑"Mozilla DeepSpeech github page, discontinued". 2025-09-08. Archived from the original on 2025-09-08. Retrieved 2025-10-15.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
