I’ve been a fan of Granola for some time. It’s an AI meeting transcription tool that truly reaches the all-too-rare bar of “it just works”.
On Friday I saw they introduced a new feature, Voice Typing, so I had to give it a spin.
Granola has earned its place as one of the best (I’d argue the best) AI meeting note-takers. It sits in the background on your own device rather than sitting as an awkward robot attendee on your calls. It doesn’t make a fuss. And the notes it produces are brilliantly succinct and accurate.
Granola does meetings really well. So I was naturally curious to see them step into an adjacent area: how much of their expertise in meeting transcription would carry across?
What’s in a name?
To begin with, even the name of the feature is good. Voice typing. It’s not transcription, it’s not “speech-to-text”, it’s typing, with your voice.
You could argue those are all the same, but from my usage over the last few days, I’d argue they’re not.
Fast, accurate, free. Pick three?
Most of these services tend to fall into one of these buckets:
- They’re fast and free, they work on device (relying on an Apple Silicon Mac), and they’re quite inaccurate.
- They’re premium, with a cloud backend and a larger model to improve accuracy, and ultimately quite slow.
- They’re a hybrid that is more accurate but still slow.
I’ve used the Mac’s built-in dictation. I’ve used Whisprflow, and I’ve dabbled with Fluidvoice (an open source option).
“Slow” is relative, as all of these services claim to be faster than actual typing. But I am yet to use a speech-to-text transcription service that feels, ultimately, as efficient as typing. Because while the response back may be fast, the errors force me to re-read and edit almost every sentence.
Granola’s voice typing is really fast and it seems to be extraordinarily accurate. And when it does make an error, the user experience for learning corrections you make is so intuitive and slick that it’s almost fun to catch one.
Exciting while it lasts
There’s an argument that all of these tools sit in a category that isn’t long for this world. That before-too-long all of this will be Sherlocked and done entirely on-device and it‘ll be an OS-level feature.
That day may come, but for now it’s a rapidly evolving playful battleground. And for me, Granola just stole the playful productivity crown.
Go try them out
While I didn’t write this as an ad (more as a piece of admiration) I do have a referral link. If you sign up here you can use Granola for free, and you’ll get your first month of premium for free.
Heck, if you’re worried I’m being biased, I actually have an affiliate link to Whisprflow where I believe the kickback is more. But I still think Granola wins.