---
title: "Why I Use Voice Input"
author: "Shawn Jiang"
lang: en
date: 2026-09-24
canonical: https://tplog.dev/en/essay/why-i-use-voice-input/
translations:
  ja: https://tplog.dev/ja/essay/why-i-use-voice-input/
  zh: https://tplog.dev/zh/essay/why-i-use-voice-input/
---

# Why I Use Voice Input

As I talk about why I use voice input, I am using it right now. While I speak, other thoughts keep darting around in my mind, and some of them make their way into what I say next. I find it difficult to enter this state when I type.

If I had to describe the difference, I would say that typing feels like compressing something three-dimensional in my mind into two dimensions. I have to turn what I want to express into words, and my attention settles on the keyboard and the sentences in front of me, as if I were confined there. When I speak, by contrast, it feels as though I have entered that three-dimensional space and can roam through it. Even as I say one thing, other thoughts can keep moving through my mind.

This is simply my own experience. By thoughts “darting around,” I also mean those I have not yet had time to organize. They surface as I speak, and some find their way into what follows, leading me to say things I had not yet put into words. As a result, voice input allows me to express more ideas than typing does. If you start with a fixed passage and then compare whether speaking or typing it is faster, this part of the difference is hard to see: what you say may contain more than what you had planned in advance.

Voice input also has a very direct benefit: you do not have to type. For people who can already touch-type fluently, using a keyboard may not feel like much of a burden. But that does not mean fluent typing should be treated as a basic skill everyone has. If you cannot yet touch-type, expressing an idea also means searching for keys and checking whether the input is correct. Besides the thoughts in your mind, there is now one more thing to manage.

Of course, you can spend time becoming a fluent typist. But while you are still learning, you can also start by speaking and preserve your thoughts that way. Voice input gives people that additional choice.

What you say may not yet be ready to read, and you can still organize and revise it afterward. For me, simply giving those thoughts a chance to be spoken already has real value. I like the feeling that my mind can still roam freely while I speak, and I am happy to let those darting thoughts find their way into the text.