Voice input not working in an app or browser: an overview of errors

Potok transcribes Russian speech; this site has been translated into English for convenience.

Voice input most often fails in a particular app or browser because of a special text field: a chat in a CRM, a design builder, a form in an old accounting system. Such fields accept pasted text differently from an ordinary window. Potok (potok.now) gives 14 days of full access for free, so you can check insertion in your own work apps before changing anything in settings.

Voice input works great in a notepad or in mail, and then silently refuses to insert text into a CRM comment or a spreadsheet cell. It looks as if the program is broken, although more often the problem is in the app itself. The articles in this section go through specific cases: 1C, Airtable, amoCRM, Bitrix24, the browser and Canva.

Where problems in apps and the browser come from

Many web services draw their own text field instead of the standard operating system element: a design builder like Canva, a table like Airtable, a comment in a CRM. Voice input inserts text into the place that the system considers the active field, and such a homemade component may simply not accept the insertion or may put the text somewhere other than where the cursor is.

Old accounting systems like 1C are built even more rigidly: they have their own form rendering engine, which does not always give external programs standard access to the field, so voice input in such a form may not work at all, regardless of the program.

Mobile apps are a separate story: Bitrix24 on a phone runs inside its own shell, which does not have to repeat the behavior of a desktop browser or website, and a feature that works fine on a computer may simply be missing on a mobile screen.

Another cause is not the app but the browser itself: it manages microphone permission for each site separately and can remember a single refusal forever, after which the site no longer asks for permission and looks as if the microphone does not work at all.

• Voice input in Yandex Browser does not work: microphone access
• Full microphone block for all sites in Yandex Browser

All articles in this section (36): potok.now/oshibki/apps-browsers

When the program is not the problem

If the field does not accept text from any program at all, neither by pasting from the clipboard nor by typing by hand, the problem is not voice input. It is a limitation of the field itself or of its protection, and reinstalling the program will not help here.

Potok is a cloud service, and recognition runs on servers in Russia. It does not work without the internet, and this is worth checking first if the failure happened in a browser with an unstable connection.

Breakdowns of individual errors

• Voice input is not inserted into standard 1C forms: Potok inserts text into any field where you can put the cursor, but the 1C form engine is not supported by every app.
• Dictated text in an Airtable cell is sometimes not saved: SpeakFlow works right in the browser, which does not protect against the quirks of a specific web table.
• Voice input does not insert text into an amoCRM comment: Talkpad has desktop and mobile versions on different platforms, and they may behave differently.
• Voice input in a Bitrix24 task does not work in the mobile app: WhispeRu works only on Windows, and desktop programs are not designed for mobile apps at all.
• The browser remembers a refusal of microphone access: this is the behavior of the browser itself, not of the voice input program.
• Canva has no voice text input directly into a design block: Molvi recognizes on the device, offline, but local recognition does not change how Canva handles its text blocks either.

Frequently asked questions

Related software: terms compared

Built-in dictation and Potok

Primary sources: speakflow.ru · speakflow.ru · speakflow.ru · blog.speakflow.ru