Potok transcribes Russian speech; this site has been translated into English for convenience.
There is no data on built-in text dictation in the Brave browser itself: the only known feature is different: the Brave Leo assistant on iOS answers voice questions instead of typing, and in Brave Talk it transcribes a meeting. To dictate text into the address bar or a page field on Windows, macOS and Linux, the OS system dictation or the Potok app (potok.now), which recognizes about 900 characters per minute, will do.
Did you open Brave and want to dictate a search query, a letter or a note by voice instead of typing by hand? Let us see what the browser itself can do and how to dictate text if it has no dictation button of its own.
Does Brave have dictation of its own
There is no data on whether the Brave browser itself has built-in dictation of ordinary text, for example a microphone button in the address bar or the search field. But Brave has another voice feature: the built-in AI assistant Brave Leo. On iOS you can ask it a voice question instead of typing it by hand. It works like a conversation with an assistant and not like dictation into an arbitrary text field.
Another Leo feature is real-time transcription of meetings in Brave's own video call service, Brave Talk. It turns the call participants' speech into text during the conversation, but it also has nothing to do with dictating ordinary text on a page or in the address bar.
The address bar itself and the fields on web pages in Brave are ordinary text fields: they accept pasted text from wherever it comes. So you can dictate into them with the operating system's system dictation and with a third-party app.
| What is available | |
|---|---|
| Text insertion | yes |
| Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS |
| Potok | hold the key, speak, release: the text lands in the field under the cursor |
How to dictate in Brave through Potok
On a computer with Windows, macOS or Linux, where Leo's voice feature from iOS is not available, you can dictate text into Brave with the Potok app.
- Install Potok and allow it system access to the microphone. Without this, dictation does not work.
- Choose the microphone you need in Potok's settings or in the menu of its tray icon.
- Open Brave and put the cursor in the address bar, the search field or any text field on a page.
- Hold the hotkey (Ctrl+Space by default), dictate the text and release the key: the text appears in the active field, and Potok places punctuation and capital letters itself.
Voice input works in a similar way in other browsers, for example in Google Chrome or in Microsoft Edge: the browser itself gives only a text field, and a separate app helps dictate text into it.
Where voice input in Brave will not work
Leo's voice feature in Brave is not built as dictation: on iOS it answers a question asked by voice, and in Brave Talk it transcribes a meeting. You cannot dictate arbitrary text into a page field through it. On a computer, where long texts are typed most often, this feature does not exist at all.
Potok is a cloud service, recognition runs on servers in Russia, and it does not work without the internet. It has no offline mode and no voice commands, and 2500 words per week on one device are free. For someone who types in the browser all day long, this limit may not be enough.
Frequently asked questions
No. According to Brave, on iOS you can ask the assistant itself a voice question through Leo instead of typing it. This is not dictation into an arbitrary text field on a page or the address bar.
Yes, but this is a Leo feature in Brave Talk video calls: it transcribes the conversation in real time. It has nothing to do with dictating ordinary text in the browser.
Any microphone the system sees as a recording device will do. In Potok you choose it in the app settings or in the tray icon menu; system access to the microphone is required.
Potok states about 900 characters per minute by voice versus about 200 when typing, roughly 4 times faster. This is the product's own estimate, not an independent measurement.
Built-in system tools (Win+H in Windows, Dictation in macOS, Voice Typing in Google Docs, Gboard on Android), voice browser extensions, and specialized desktop and web services (Potok and similar) that work on top of any app via a hotkey.
Voice input turns speech into text on the fly: the user speaks, the program transcribes the sound with speech recognition technology (ASR) and inserts the resulting text into the active field, such as email, a messenger or a document. In Potok this works through a hotkey: hold it, speak, release, and the text is inserted.
How to start
Potok is available for Windows, macOS and Linux. For two weeks everything is open for free, after that 2500 words per week without paying. Potok is a cloud service: speech is recognized on servers in Russia, and it does not work without the internet.
Download PotokYou dictate in the app, and recordings and voice messages are transcribed by @potok_now_bot in Telegram. 60 minutes per month are free; the Potok subscription removes the limit in the bot and in the app.
Built-in dictation and Potok
| Tool | Where it works | Russian language | Where speech is recognized |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows voice typing (Win+H) | Windows 10 and 11 | Windows 11 only | Microsoft cloud, does not work offline |
| macOS Dictation | macOS | yes | on the device or on Apple servers |
| Potok | Windows, macOS, Linux | primary language | cloud, servers in Russia, does not work offline |
Primary sources: brave.com · support.brave.app · brave.com · support.brave.app