Nothing’s Essential Voice: A Dictation Tool That Actually Gets It

Another week, another dictation app. I’ve lost count of how many have launched in the past couple of years—Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, Willow, Monologue, and now hardware company Nothing is throwing its hat in the ring with Essential Voice.

This isn’t just another me-too product though. Nothing’s approach is interesting because it’s baked into the system, not just another keyboard extension you have to hunt down in settings.

The core idea is familiar: speak into any app, get formatted text back, with all the “ums” and “ahs” stripped out. Nothing claims you can also set custom voice shortcuts for things like your address or frequently used links. So instead of typing out your full address every time, you just say “my address” and it fills in. That’s genuinely useful, especially on a phone screen.

Right now it’s only on the Phone (3), with the Phone (4a) Pro getting it later this month and the regular Phone (4a) following next month. That’s a pretty narrow rollout for a feature that could be a real differentiator.

Nothing tweeted that the average person types 36 words per minute on a phone but can speak four times faster. That math checks out. I’ve been using dictation tools on and off for years, and the speed difference is real—when they work well. The problem has always been accuracy and the awkwardness of correcting mistakes with your voice in public.

To use Essential Voice, you press the Essential key on supported devices or activate it from the keyboard. It’s similar to what Superwhisper just released for iPhone users, mapping the action button to dictation. But Nothing’s version is system-level, which means it works everywhere without you having to remember which app supports it.

One feature that actually caught my attention is the translation capability. Over 100 languages at launch, and the company says it will add app-based custom styling later—so you can have a different tone for work messages versus casual chats. That sounds like they’re thinking about context, which is more than most dictation tools bother with.

Nothing is one of the first to offer this kind of system-level integration, but they won’t be the last. Google just released an offline dictation app, and I expect more manufacturers to follow. The writing was on the wall as soon as voice interfaces started improving.

Is Essential Voice a game-changer? Hard to say without spending serious time with it. But Nothing has a track record of shipping polished software experiences, and this feels like a natural extension of their approach. If it works as advertised, it could be the dictation tool that finally makes me ditch typing for anything longer than a text message.