How to Get a Google Voice Number for Free Calls on Your PC, Android and iOS By Nicholas Godwin – Posted on Dec 11, 2017 Dec 11, 2017 in Software Tools A Google Voice number is a free service from Google. 1) Google Voice App: To help keep Google Voice open on the desktop, Google voice app is created. As this is app based on Adobe Air, it will work on all popular OS like Windows, Mac and Linux. 2) GVNotifier: GVNotifier is a powerful app that brings Google Voice right to your Windows desktop. Quickly send or receive messages, listen to or read voicemail, connect calls and more.
Last week, Google it has added free speech-to-text capabilities to Google Docs (Google calls it Voice Typing). This would have been huge news 20 years ago, yet when Google unveiled it, it was only described in a single paragraph in a middle of a larger blog entry. In a world with Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Google Now, a free speech-to-text service that works on multiple computing platforms may not seem like big news anymore. Voice Typing is different, though; it’s kind of a built-in version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking (for those of you who remember and/or still use that program). Voice Typing works in Chrome on the desktop, as well as the Docs apps for Apple iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android. Here’s how it works: To start voice typing on an iOS device, tap the microphone icon to the left of the spacebar near the bottom of the screen.
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Tap the microphone icon on the right side of the screen above the on-screen keyboard to start Voice Typing on an Android phone or tablet. If you want to voice type on a Mac or Windows PC, you need to use Google Docs in a Chrome web browser. Then, select Tools Voice Typing. You will see a microphone icon appear with the tool tip “Click to speak” appear in the browser screen near your Docs document. Google Docs Voice Typing currently supports 48 languages, including regional variants of Chinese, English, Portuguese, and Spanish.
You do not need to perform any kind of training before using Voice Typing, and it doesn’t appear to need a special microphone. For this article, I used the built-in microphones of my Dell Windows notebook, a Nexus 6, and an iPhone 6+ to test Google’s speech-to-text.
Voice Typing does require you speak words to add punctuation: “Period”, “Comma”, “Exclamation point”, “Question mark”, “New line”, and “New paragraph.” Unlike dedicated speech-to-text systems, Voice Typing does not have a way to correct or change text using just your voice. With Voice Typing left turned on, you must use your keyboard (physical or on-screen) to make changes to text. In addition to my regular voice, I tested how well Voice Typing would work on truly continuous speech by playing a into the microphone of my Nexus 6 phone running the Google Docs app. Google Docs recorded 288 words using Voice Typing by the time I pressed the Pause button. It looked like it did a credible job of performing speech-to-text of a person speaking relatively fast. My rough estimate is that it was about 85 to 90% correct.
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And, of course, there is no punctuation, since you need to actually speak the punctuation marks for it to appear in the document. One tip: Voice Typing doesn’t like it when you swear. For example, If I say, “What the f.?”, it will censor the text of the censored word. This was, appropriately enough, first noted in a. I started, but didn’t finish, writing this article using Voice Typing. Unless you are a smooth extemporaneous speaker (I am not), it is not the fastest way to write more than a few sentences of text. And, like all speech-to-text systems, it works best in a relatively quiet environment.
I’m not sure if I will use Voice Typing regularly. I can see myself using it to make a few notes on my phone. And it may be interesting to see how well it performs in an interview situation with multiple people.
Place and Receive Calls From Gmail Google allows anyone to place free calls to the US and Canada from Gmail. However, these calls will appear to come from a random shared number that your recipients won’t recognize. If you switch to Google Voice, calls you place from Gmail will appear to come from your own personal Google Voice number. Best of all, you can even receive incoming calls in Gmail and answer them from your computer. Google Voice integration is now part of Google Hangouts, so it’s also integrated into Google+ and the Hangouts Chrome extension.
Place and Receive Calls on Your Phone Over Wi-Fi Google doesn’t yet provide a way to send and receive calls from your phone over Wi-Fi, probably because they’re worried about angering the carriers. However, apps like and allow you to receive and place calls over a Wi-Fi or cellular data connection — no need for cell phone minutes.
They’re unofficial, but tap into the same support that Google uses for calls in Gmail. These apps can be used by anyone to place free calls to the US or Canada, but they become a full sending-and-receiving solution when paired with a Google Voice account. Text From Any Browser or Phone Google Voice also offers free texting. You can send and receive texts in your browser from the Google Voice website or via the Google Voice Chrome extension. The official Google Voice mobile app also offers free texts, so you can text for free from your phone without any unofficial apps. This also gives you an archive of your texts you can search online — you won’t lose your texts when you reset your phone or get a new one.
Easy Number Portability Google Voice gives you a special number that allows you to forward your calls to other numbers. Once you set this up and give everyone your Google Voice number, you’ll be able to more easily switch phones in the future. For example, if you move from one cellular carrier to another, you don’t have to go through the standard process of porting a cell phone number — you can just get an entirely new cell phone number and forward your main Google Voice number to it. Google also offers a way to port your existing phone number to Google Voice if you’d rather not give everyone your new Google Voice number.
This is one of the few Google Voice features that costs money — the other being international calls outside the US and Canada. Voicemail With Transcription Google Voice provides voicemail, but it doesn’t just give you a piece of audio to listen to. Google Voice uses Google’s advanced speech recognition technology to transcribe your voicemail, turning it into readable text.
If Google Voice messes up the transcription or you’d just rather hear the original message, you can also listen to the attached audio file. Call Forwarding With Rules This service doesn’t just allow you to forward your calls to a single number. You can set up rules and priorities — automatically forwarding calls to your office phone during certain hours of the day and to your cell phone during the rest of the day, for example. You could also have Google Voice ring one phone and continue to other phones if you don’t answer. For example, it could call your home phone, work phone, and then cell phone in order if you don’t answer any of them. Block Phone Numbers For some reason, blocking phone numbers isn’t often easy even though we live in 2013. Google Voice allows you to block calls from specific numbers.
The caller will receive a “Number not in service” message when they call you, so this may even fool telemarketers into removing your phone number from their lists. Switch Phones During a Call Because of the way Google Voice handles call forwarding, you can switch phones during a call. While on a call, press the.
button on your phone and your other connected phones will ring. Pick one up and you can continue the call without hanging up — perfect for if your cell phone is about to die or for switching between landline and cell phones on the go. These aren’t the only interesting Google Voice features. Google Voice also offers easy setup of conference calls and the ability to record calls, among many other features. If you’re in the US and haven’t gotten around to looking at Google Voice yet, you should sign up and try it out. As with many Google products in the wake of Google Reader’s shutdown, some people are concerned that Google Voice may be swept away in a round of spring cleaning. It’s impossible to tell if this will happen, but that “Google Voice is obviously a prominent part of our communications team We’re not going to leave those users high and dry.” in April 2013.
Google Voice has also recently been integrated into Google Hangouts. The future might not look amazingly sunny for Google Voice, especially since it hasn’t been rolled out internationally, but there are no real indications that Google is planning a shutdown any time soon. Image Credit.