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.
Best medical dictation software for Windows 2026
Ranked by clinical setting — Dragon Medical One, 3M M*Modal, nVoq and the free built-ins first, and on-device Blabb Medical when PHI must stay on the PC.
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.
vs Google Docs Voice Typing
Free and easy — but Docs-only, sends audio to Google, and can't type into other apps or locked-down VDI.
vs Microsoft Dictate
Built into Word, Outlook and OneNote via Microsoft 365 — but sends audio to Microsoft and only works inside Office.
vs Speechnotes
A free online dictation notepad — browser-only, online-only, cloud recognition.
vs Voice In
The popular dictation Chrome extension — web fields only, recognition in the cloud.
vs Willow Voice
Polished cloud dictation at ~$15/month — Blabb runs the same class of AI on your PC for $4.99.
vs Whisper
The free, open-source speech model behind much modern dictation — it transcribes files; Blabb is the finished app.
vs Paraspeech
A polished local-first Mac app with optional cloud — Blabb is Windows-only and 100% on-device.
vs Talon Voice
Free, on-device, and built for hands-free programming — Blabb is on-device dictation for everyday writing.
vs Philips SpeechLive
Cloud dictation for teams from ~$17/user/month with typist routing — Blabb is solo dictation on your PC.
vs BigHand
An enterprise legal dictation-and-workflow platform sold per-firm — Blabb is personal dictation, on your PC.
vs nVoq Voice
A cloud clinical-documentation platform for home-health and hospice agencies — Blabb is on-device dictation for one PC.
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.
Prevent AI data leakage
Cloud and LLM dictation tools open an egress path for your speech — logged, stored, perhaps used to train a model. On-device processing closes it. The OWASP and NIST risk view.
Enterprise dictation
The IT and vendor-review read: signed MSIX from the Microsoft Store, no data-processing agreement to negotiate for dictated content, 30-day offline licensing, locked-down RDP/Citrix/VDI reach.
Zero-trust dictation
NIST SP 800-207 says assume breach and never trust a network by default. Dictation that keeps speech on the endpoint takes the cloud out of the data path.
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.
Offline dictation software
Dictation that needs no internet — speech and cleanup on your PC, 30 days offline once verified, types into any app including locked-down sessions.
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.
How we prevent AI slop
The rewrite step is where chatbot flavour leaks into dictation. Five tested rules that stop the model inventing, upgrading, or softening what you said — with the before-and-after evidence, and what it cost in accuracy.
Cloud dictation reliability
Why cloud dictation has bad days — shared GPU capacity, forced model retirements, ISP failures on the network path — documented from providers' own status pages, and why on-device dictation can't.
"Managed by your organization" — the fix
Voice typing blocked by the speech-services policy: what the policy actually controls, the fixes in order, and dictation that never touches the speech service in the first place.
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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