Arabic Voice Typing

This is the single thing worth knowing before you start. Recognition is requested as ar-SA, and it is trained overwhelmingly on Modern Standard Arabic — the Arabic of news, books and formal writing. Most people, most of the time, speak a dialect.

Darija, Egyptian, Levantine and Gulf speech are understood in part: words shared with MSA come through, dialect-specific vocabulary frequently does not, and whatever you say is written back in MSA spelling. Saying wach nta labas will not give you those words on the page. If the result is coming back wrong more often than right, speaking a little more formally than you would to a friend is the fix that actually works.

The text comes back undiacritised — no فَتْحَة, no كَسْرَة, no ضَمَّة. That is not the recogniser failing; it is how Arabic is written everywhere except children’s books, language teaching and the Quran. For a message, an email or a document it is exactly what you want.

If you do need diacritics, dictation will not give them to you at any setting. Add them afterwards in the editor, or start from the Arabic keyboard, where they are on the layout.

Press the microphone, allow access when the browser asks, and speak. Text appears as you talk — the recogniser revises its guess mid-sentence, so a word can change after you have moved past it. That is normal; wait until you finish the sentence before judging the result.

What you end up with is an ordinary editable box containing Arabic script, not a locked transcript. Click into it and correct anything. Numbers and Latin brand names tend to arrive in Latin characters rather than Arabic — worth checking before you send.

The microphone is the browser’s, not ours. On Chrome and Edge the audio is sent to the browser vendor’s speech service and the text is sent back; WorldTyping is never in that path and never receives audio. The text that arrives stays in your browser, saved locally so your draft survives a reload.

Practically, that also explains the failure modes: dictation needs an internet connection, and if a browser has no Arabic speech support the button will simply not respond. Chrome or Edge on desktop and Android are the reliable combination; Safari support varies by version.