Over the past few years, AI-driven dictation tools have surged in popularity. Alongside established apps like Wispr Flow, SuperWhisper, Willow, and Monolouge, new options are appearing almost weekly. On Thursday, hardware company Nothing introduced its own competitive offering, named Essential Voice. The core concept mirrors other dictation apps: Essential Voice works across any application to convert your speech into formatted text, automatically removing filler words such as "um" and "ah." The company also noted that users can create custom voice shortcuts for words, links, templates, and frequently used phrases. For example, you could assign the shortcut "my address" to instantly input your full address. Currently, this feature is available on the Phone (3), with a rollout planned for the Phone (4a) Pro later this month and support for the Phone (4a) arriving next month.

To access the feature, users simply press the Essential key on compatible devices or activate it from the keyboard. This approach is similar to a tool Superwhisper released earlier this week for iPhone users, which allows them to map the iPhone's action button to the app's keyboard for dictation. Nothing's new tool also offers direct text translation between languages. At launch, the company stated the feature supports over 100 languages. In the future, it will introduce app-based custom styling, enabling users to adjust the tone of AI editing within specific app categories, such as work and messaging. Nothing is among the first companies to provide a system-level integration for dictation. However, given Google's recent release of its offline dictation app, we may see more companies launching similar tools in the near future.