In the early days of speech recognition, you were lucky if half of your words were recognized, even if you spoke slowly like a robot. Today, every smartphone has some sort of voice assistant that can quickly jot down notes for you or perform tasks like opening apps.

However, if you have a Windows 10 computer, you can also control Windows 10 with your voice. This is more than just a cool feature. It can be a real productivity booster and, for people with certain disabilities, an effective way to take control of their computer.

Do you want to control Windows 10 with your voice, or do you just want it to write down what you say? Voice control is a different feature than dictation, and some users often confuse the two concepts. If you just want to talk and have the computer write down what you say, you don’t have to go through the trouble of setting up speech recognition.

For example, Google Docs has an excellent voice dictation feature that uses the power of the cloud to convert your speech into text. If you're a macOS user, you can even use Apple's built-in system.