Dictation on Windows that works offline
If typing is slow or tiring, speaking is often faster. But the dictation built into Windows sends your voice away to be recognised, and stops working without a connection. Here is what your options are.
Last updated September 2026 · Applies to Windows 10 and Windows 11
Why offline matters more than it sounds
Two reasons, and people usually care about one or the other.
Privacy. Dictation is not like other typing. People dictate medical letters, complaints, job applications, notes about their children. Cloud recognition means that audio leaves your computer and is processed on someone else's. For most people most of the time that is fine. For some content, and in some workplaces, it is simply not allowed.
It has to work. Cloud dictation on a train, on hotel wifi, or on a corporate network that blocks unfamiliar services is dictation that fails exactly when you need it. If speaking is your main way of getting words down, an internet-dependent tool is a fragile thing to rely on.
What Windows gives you
Voice typing (Windows + H)
Press Windows + H in any text box and a small bar appears. It is genuinely good: accurate, quick, and it handles punctuation commands.
The catch is that it depends on online speech recognition. Without a connection it does not work, and with one, your speech is processed by Microsoft's servers rather than on your PC.
There is one more wrinkle worth knowing if you are looking for an app to start it for you: Windows deliberately ignores the Windows + H shortcut when another program sends it, so no application can open voice typing on your behalf. You have to press it yourself.
Voice access
Voice access is the newer accessibility feature in Windows 11, and it is the answer if offline is your requirement and you want to stay with what Microsoft ships. It uses on-device speech recognition, so it works without a connection once set up, and it can control the whole computer, not just type.
Where it falls short: it is built for controlling Windows by voice, so there is a command language to learn, and the language support is narrower than voice typing's. It also downloads a speech model per language, which some managed computers will not allow.
Legacy Windows Speech Recognition
The old Windows Speech Recognition is still present on some systems, works offline, and is being retired in favour of voice access. Accuracy is noticeably behind anything modern. It is not worth setting up today.
Dictate in Microsoft Word
Word's Dictate button is cloud-based and needs a Microsoft 365 subscription and a connection. Fine inside Word, no help anywhere else.
The problem with speech packs
Anything that recognises speech on your own machine needs a model for the language you are speaking, and Windows handles this through optional speech packs installed per language.
This trips people up constantly. The pack for your language may simply not be installed, and the failure is silent: you speak, and nothing happens. No error, no explanation. On a work computer you may not have permission to add one. And if you want to dictate in a second language, that is another pack, another download, another thing to go wrong.
If dictation on your PC does nothing at all with no error message, a missing speech pack is the most likely reason. Settings → Time & language → Language & region, then check the language options for a speech component.
How WinShades does it
WinShades takes a different approach: the speech recognition ships inside the app. It uses whisper, an open-source model, running on your own processor.
- Nothing leaves your computer. Your voice is never sent anywhere, because there is nowhere for it to be sent. There is no account and no service behind it.
- No connection needed, ever. It works on a train, on a plane, and on networks that block everything.
- No speech packs. One model covers every language WinShades offers, so there is nothing to install per language and nothing to be quietly missing.
- Sixteen language variants, including ones Windows often cannot dictate at all on a given PC.
- Punctuation and capitals are added for you, without having to say "full stop".
It works the way you would expect: press Start dictation, speak in whole sentences, and your words appear a moment after each natural pause. Text lands where your cursor is, so you can drop a sentence into the middle of a paragraph. From there you can spell-check it, proofread it, have it read back to you, and copy it wherever you needed it.
The trade-off, in fairness: because it transcribes after each pause rather than word by word, you see your text arrive about a second later rather than instantly. And like every dictation system, it will hear unusual names as ordinary words.
Which should you use?
| Voice typing | Voice access | WinShades | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Works offline | No | Yes | Yes |
| Voice stays on your PC | No | Yes | Yes |
| Needs a speech pack per language | No | Yes | No |
| Types into any application | Yes | Yes | Into its own editor, then copy |
| Controls Windows by voice | No | Yes | No |
| Cost | Free | Free | Paid, with a free trial |
Straightforwardly: if you are online and untroubled by cloud recognition, voice typing is free and very good. If you want offline and are happy learning a command language, voice access is free too. WinShades is for the case where you want dictation that simply works offline in your language, with reading and spelling tools around it.
Dictating well, whichever you use
- Speak in whole sentences. Recognisers use the surrounding words to decide between similar-sounding ones, so a full sentence is transcribed better than the same words said one at a time.
- Pause at the end of a sentence, not in the middle. That is the signal most systems use to decide a thought is finished.
- Talk normally. Over-enunciating makes accuracy worse, not better.
- Get the microphone right. A headset beats a laptop microphone across a desk. Background noise costs more accuracy than accent does.
- Fix names afterwards. Every system mishears unfamiliar proper nouns; correcting them at the end is faster than fighting them as you go.
Try it
WinShades includes offline dictation, reading text aloud, spell check and grammar proofreading, alongside the screen tinting and reading rulers it started as.