Voice Typing for Developers: How to Code Faster with Dictation
Developers spend a surprising amount of their day writing prose, not code. Documentation, code reviews, commit messages, Slack threads, JIRA tickets, emails, technical specs. All of that is natural language, and all of it can be dictated.
Voice typing isn’t about replacing your keyboard for writing code. It’s about giving your hands a break during all the other writing you do. Here’s how developers are using it.
The RSI Problem Nobody Talks About
Repetitive strain injury is an occupational hazard of software development. Hours of typing, day after day, year after year, takes a toll on your wrists, forearms, and shoulders. Some developers hit a wall in their 30s or 40s where pain starts limiting their output.
Voice typing is one of the most effective RSI prevention strategies because it eliminates typing entirely for tasks that don’t require a keyboard. If you write 2,000 words of non-code text per day (documentation, messages, reviews), that’s 2,000 words of keystroke load you can shift to your voice.
Writing Documentation by Voice
Documentation is the most natural fit for voice typing. When you explain something out loud, you tend to write in a more conversational, readable style than when you type. That’s actually a feature, not a bug. Good documentation reads like someone explaining a concept to you, not like a reference manual.
With QuickSay, you can open your docs file, hold the hotkey, and just talk through the explanation. The LLaMA cleanup pass handles punctuation, removes filler words like “um” and “you know,” and formats the text naturally. You’ll still want to edit the output, but you’re starting from a solid first draft instead of a blank page.
This works especially well for:
- README files — explain what the project does and how to set it up
- API documentation — describe endpoints, parameters, and expected responses
- Architecture decision records — talk through why you made a technical choice
- Onboarding guides — explain your codebase to new team members
- Inline comments — dictate explanations for complex logic
Git Commit Messages and PR Descriptions
Writing good commit messages takes effort. Most developers dash off a quick “fix bug” or “update styles” because typing a proper message feels like friction. But when you can just say what you did, the barrier drops.
Instead of typing, hold your hotkey and say: “Refactored the authentication middleware to handle token expiration. Previously, expired tokens caused a 500 error instead of returning a 401. Added unit tests for the edge case where the token expires mid-request.” QuickSay transcribes and cleans that up into a well-formatted commit message.
The same principle applies to pull request descriptions. Talk through what changed, why it changed, and what reviewers should pay attention to. You’ll write better PR descriptions because speaking is faster than typing, so you’re more likely to actually include the context your reviewers need.
Code Reviews
Reading someone’s pull request and then typing out thoughtful feedback is one of those tasks that’s important but draining. Voice typing makes the feedback loop faster.
As you read through the diff, dictate your comments: “This function is doing too many things. I’d suggest extracting the validation logic into a separate method. Also, the error message on line 47 doesn’t include the actual value that failed validation, which would make debugging harder.”
That kind of detailed, constructive feedback is easier to produce by voice than by keyboard, especially when you’re reviewing multiple PRs in a row.
Technical Writing and Blog Posts
If you maintain a technical blog, write conference talk proposals, or contribute to engineering publications, voice typing dramatically speeds up the first-draft phase. Most people can speak 3-4x faster than they type, which means a 1,000-word blog post that might take 45 minutes to type can be dictated in 15.
The LLaMA cleanup in QuickSay is particularly useful here because it handles the transition from spoken to written language. Spoken text tends to be more repetitive and less structured than written text, and the cleanup pass addresses both issues.
What About Actual Code?
Voice typing is not great for writing code. Programming languages have too much syntax, too many special characters, and too much structure that doesn’t map well to spoken language. We’re not going to pretend otherwise.
That said, there are code-adjacent tasks where voice works well:
- Dictating code comments for complex functions
- Writing TODO comments with context about what needs to change
- Describing expected behavior in test descriptions
- Drafting SQL queries in plain English before translating to actual SQL
The point isn’t to replace your keyboard. It’s to use the right input method for the right task.
Getting Started
QuickSay works in every Windows app, which means it works in your terminal, your IDE, your browser, and your messaging apps. There’s no plugin to install, no extension to configure. You set a hotkey, hold it while you speak, and the text appears wherever your cursor is.
The setup takes about two minutes, and thanks to Groq’s free tier, you get 8 hours of free daily transcription. That’s more than enough for a full workday of documentation, messages, and reviews.
If you spend a significant portion of your day writing text that isn’t code, voice typing is worth trying. Your wrists will thank you.
Download QuickSay for $29 — works in VS Code, terminals, browsers, and every other Windows app.