The Blabb
library
Everything we've written about voice dictation on Windows — honest comparisons, locked-down-desktop guides, the research behind the speed claims, and privacy for people whose words can't leave the building. Claims are sourced and dated; where a competitor wins, the page says so.
Blabb vs the field, honestly
Best dictation software for Windows 2026
Ranked by use case, not by us — free built-ins first, and when the answer honestly isn't Blabb.
Every way to dictate on Windows 11
The full map: Voice Typing, Voice Access, Fluid Dictation, Word Dictate, cloud apps, on-device apps. Try the free ones first — seriously.
vs Windows Voice Typing (Win+H)
Free and built in — until it can't go where you work. Azure processing, silence cutoffs, and the Copilot+ exception, footnoted.
vs Dragon
The $699 veteran. Where Dragon still wins (hands-free control), and where thirty years of legacy shows.
vs Wispr Flow
Same promise, opposite architecture: cloud processing at $12–15/month vs on-device at USD $4.99. The privacy fine print, compared.
vs DictaFlow
A sharp modern dictation app with its own Citrix/RDP input path. The honest difference is what runs where — and how much stays on your PC.
vs OpenWhispr
Genuinely privacy-first and open-source, with a free local tier. Where a free, auditable tool wins — and where Blabb’s locked-down reach earns its keep.
vs SuperWhisper
The Mac favorite's Windows app lags far behind. What Windows-first buys you instead.
vs Otter.ai
Different jobs: Otter transcribes meetings into its workspace; Blabb types your voice at the cursor. Some people need both.
The deep material
The locked-down dictation guide
What IT actually blocks in RDP, Citrix, and VDI — clipboard redirection policies, banned extensions — and the input paths that still work.
Dictation in Citrix & RDP
The short version: how Blabb types into clipboard-blocked sessions from your side of the glass.
Speech vs typing: the research
Stanford's 3× finding, the 150-vs-40 wpm numbers, and the honest caveats about when the speedup is real.
Confidential dictation
NDA, PHI, client data: what cloud processing means under HIPAA and confidentiality duties — and how on-device removes the vendor from the chain.
How on-device dictation works
Quantized models, small language models, GPU offload: why data-center quality now runs on a normal PC, and why that makes it both private and cheap.
How we tune for faithfulness
The testing behind the cleanup: the scenarios we run it against, the approaches we measured, and the rule that when the model is unsure, it leaves your words alone.
The full feature list
Everything Blabb ships, grouped in one place — speech, the six cleanup profiles, spoken formatting, locked-down reach, privacy, and the editions.
Voice typing (Win+H) not working?
The documented causes and fixes, in order — online speech recognition, microphone settings, org policy blocks, and the "failures" that are actually by design.
How to dictate in Microsoft Word
All three ways: the Dictate button, Win+H, and on-device apps — setup steps and which to use when.
Dictation for your job
For lawyers
Model Rule 1.6(c), technology competence, Opinion 477R — and why on-device dictation shrinks the whole vendor analysis.
For developers
Prompting AI assistants is a writing job. Brain-dump at 150 wpm, keep proprietary context off third-party clouds, dictate into terminals.
For RSI
When typing hurts: the occupational-injury numbers, the Voice Access + dictation setup, and why AI cleanup matters doubly when every keystroke counts.
For doctors
Dragon Medical's real price, what it does that we don't, and the on-device option for the writing around the chart — PHI never leaves the machine.
Medical edition
48,133 medical terms on a plan of their own — FDA drug names, NLM clinical terms, ICD-10 diagnoses — built to come out right the first time, entirely on your PC.
Legal edition
13,004 legal terms on a plan of their own: terms of art, Latin phrases, procedural vocabulary — "voir dire", not "voir dyre", first try.
Enough reading. It types.
Two weeks free, on-device, dictation that runs on your PC.
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