Potok transcribes Russian speech; this site has been translated into English for convenience.
Voice input errors on Xiaomi are most often caused by settings, not by a breakdown: Gboard clashes with Google Assistant, voice input does not respond in any app, or the microphone physically does not hear the voice. A quick check of permissions and recognition language helps sort it out, and for dictation on a computer instead of a phone there are separate programs like Potok (potok.now) with a response time of about 0.4 seconds.
Voice input on Xiaomi does not respond at all, gets mixed up with Google Assistant, or does not hear the voice through the microphone? Before reinstalling the keyboard or looking for another program, it is worth going through a short check. Often the cause is a couple of settings, not a broken device.
Check this before looking for a solution
- Open the settings of the app where dictation does not work and check the microphone permission. On Xiaomi the system can quietly revoke it after an update.
- Make sure that voice input in Gboard is turned on and that it is the one selected, not the Google voice assistant: their icons on the keyboard look alike, but they conflict with each other.
- Check the recognition language: Russian must be selected in the Gboard settings, otherwise the program either stays silent or takes the speech for another language.
- Record a short voice message with the voice recorder. If the microphone does not hear the voice at all, the problem is not the program but the hardware or the system permission.
- Check for updates of Gboard, the Google app and the MIUI or HyperOS firmware: some conflicts are fixed exactly this way.
- Restart the app and, if that does not help, the phone itself: voice input sometimes hangs in a background process after long use.
All articles in this section (3): potok.now/oshibki/xiaomi
Common cases and pages with a solution
- Gboard conflicts with Google Assistant on Xiaomi: on a computer this will not happen, because Potok has its own hotkey Ctrl+Space, with no conflict with voice assistants.
- Voice input does not work in any app on Xiaomi: often the cause is a revoked microphone permission, not the app itself.
- Xiaomi does not hear the voice: a check through the voice recorder: the same voice recorder test tells a microphone failure from a software error.
When it is easier to choose another tool
If voice input on the phone regularly misbehaves because of app conflicts, it is easier to move dictation to the computer for work texts. Potok is a cloud service, and recognition runs on servers in Russia. It does not work without the internet, so take it instead of a mobile keyboard only if a stable network is nearby. For voice commands to the phone itself, such as “turn on the flashlight” or “dial a number”, computer programs will not do: that is a separate feature that Potok does not have.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Among third-party voice input programs on Android there is, for example, Talkpad: on mobile it gives 1500 words per week for free, plus a 14-day Pro trial. It is a separate app, not a replacement for the system keyboard, so it does not directly solve the conflict with Gboard.
Yes: speech recognition models are trained on a certain corpus of voices, and a noticeable regional or foreign accent can reduce accuracy if it is poorly represented in the training data of a particular model.
Homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently) are a known limit of any ASR: the model picks the most likely variant from the context of the phrase and can be wrong without enough context; a personal dictionary and spelling a word out letter by letter reduce the frequency of such errors for specific terms.
In some systems, yes, thanks to adaptation to a personal dictionary and the terms a user often says; in others the system is static and does not adapt to a specific person without manual dictionary setup.
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.
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.
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 PotokA voice message from a messenger or a call recording can be forwarded to the bot @potok_now_bot, and it sends back the text. The bot is part of the same subscription as the Potok app.
Related software: terms compared
| Service | Platforms | Free | Price | Payment from Russia | Where speech is recognized |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Potok | Windows, macOS, Linux | Free: 2500 words per week; full access for the first 14 days, no card needed | Pro 690 ₽/mo, 499 ₽/mo when paid yearly | Russian bank cards, rubles | cloud, servers in Russia; internet required |
| SpeakFlow | Windows, Web | 30 minutes of dictation per month, free forever | 690 ₽/mo (Personal (unlimited)) | rubles directly | cloud (the data center country is not disclosed on the website) (not confirmed) |
| Diktuy | Windows, macOS | 30 minutes of dictation per month, free forever | 239 ₽/mo (Profi (monthly equivalent when billed yearly)); 2870 ₽/yr (Profi (year, billed in full)); 479 ₽/mo (Max (monthly equivalent when billed yearly)) | rubles directly (not confirmed) | cloud (the data center country is not disclosed on the website) (not confirmed) |
| Talkpad | macOS, Windows, Android | 2500 words/week on desktop, 1500 words/week on mobile, free forever; plus a 14-day Pro trial | $6/mo (Pro (billed yearly, $72/yr)); $8/mo (Pro (monthly billing)) | unknown (not confirmed) | cloud (the legal entity is registered in Australia; the website is hosted on Cloudflare; the exact location of the ASR servers is not disclosed in the privacy policy) (not confirmed) |
| Voisty | Windows, macOS | 5 minutes of transcription (to judge the quality) | $6.7/mo (Pro); $67/yr (Pro (year)); $99/one-time (Lifetime) | Visa/Mastercard/Amex cards, PayPal; whether Russian cards are accepted is not stated (not confirmed) | device (offline, local models such as Whisper Large V3 Turbo / NVIDIA Parakeet) |
| WhispeRu | Windows | 7-day free trial (no card) | 290 ₽/mo (monthly license); 1990 ₽/yr (yearly license); 4990 ₽/one-time (lifetime license) | rubles directly (payment via YooKassa) | device (offline) |
| GigaType | Windows, macOS | free with no limits: open source under the MIT license (Copyright (c) 2026 Disrupt Builders), all features are available without payment | — | not needed: there are no paid plans | device (offline, Sber's GigaAM neural network) |
| Molvi | Windows, macOS | free forever, no accounts and no payment | — | not needed: the product is free; voluntary donations are accepted via Telegram Tribute or by card on the website, amounts are not fixed | device (offline; best quality on an NVIDIA GPU, otherwise a fast model on the CPU) |
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: speakflow.ru · speakflow.ru · speakflow.ru · blog.speakflow.ru