Voice to Text for Medium
Medium rewards writers who publish consistently. But staring at a blank page kills momentum. Blurt lets you hold a button, speak your ideas, and release. Your text appears instantly in the Medium editor. No copying, no pasting, no waiting for inspiration to strike. Just talk through your article like you would explain it to a friend, and watch it materialize on screen.
The Typing Problem
The blank page paralyzes your best ideas
You have a brilliant article concept. The outline is clear in your head. You sit down to write and suddenly the cursor blinks accusingly at you. The ideas that felt so vivid in the shower or on your walk now seem impossible to capture in text. You type a sentence, delete it, type another. An hour passes with three paragraphs to show for it.
First drafts take longer than they should
You could explain your entire article verbally in fifteen minutes. But typing it out takes three hours. The friction of the keyboard slows your thinking. You edit as you write, second-guessing every sentence. By the time you finish the intro, you have forgotten the killer point you wanted to make in section four.
Responses die in your drafts folder
You read an article that sparks a thoughtful response. You click the comment button, ready to contribute. Then you realize your response needs to be substantive to be worth posting. By the time you finish typing a proper response, twenty minutes have passed. So you save it as a draft and never return. Your responses pile up, unpublished.
Publishing consistency feels impossible
You know Medium rewards writers who publish regularly. Weekly articles would grow your audience. But each article takes so long to write that you can only manage one or two per month. You watch other writers build followings while your publishing calendar stays sparse. The gap between your ambition and output widens.
Editing takes over the creative process
You cannot help yourself. Every sentence gets scrutinized before you move to the next. The internal editor interrupts the internal writer constantly. Your articles become over-polished introductions attached to half-finished bodies. The spontaneity and voice that makes writing compelling gets edited out before it reaches the page.
How It Works
Blurt works in Medium's web editor on Safari, Chrome, Arc, or any browser. Anywhere you can type in Medium, you can talk.
Click into the Medium editor
Start a new story, open a draft, or click into a response field.
Hold your hotkey and talk
Press your chosen key, speak naturally. Blurt adds punctuation automatically.
Release and keep writing
Your text appears at the cursor. Edit, refine, or keep dictating the next section.
Real Scenarios
Dumping your first draft in one session
You have been thinking about an article all week. The structure is clear. Instead of spending three hours typing, open Medium, hold the button, and talk through the entire piece. Start with the hook, move through your main points, wrap with the conclusion. Fifteen minutes of talking produces a complete first draft. Now you can spend your energy on editing rather than extracting words from your brain.
Writing responses that actually get published
You read an article with a flawed premise and have the perfect counterpoint. Hold the button and articulate your response as if you were debating the author over coffee. Three minutes of talking produces a substantive, thoughtful comment. No more abandoning responses because typing takes too long. Your voice joins conversations while your thoughts are fresh.
Publishing consistently by reducing writing time
Weekly publishing becomes realistic when each article takes one hour instead of four. Talk through your draft in fifteen minutes, spend forty-five minutes editing and polishing. Your output triples. The Medium algorithm notices. Your articles get more distribution because you publish more frequently. Consistency compounds.
Capturing ideas before they evaporate
Inspiration strikes at inconvenient moments. You have ten minutes before a meeting but a fully-formed article intro in your head. Open Medium, hold the button, and speak the intro while it is vivid. Two minutes of talking preserves the thought that would have faded by afternoon. When you return to the draft, the hardest part is already done.
Writing personal essays with authentic voice
Personal essays work because they sound like you. Typing often strips away the conversational quality that makes essays compelling. Dictating preserves your natural rhythm, your hesitations, your specific way of phrasing things. The resulting draft sounds like you told the story to a friend because that is essentially what you did.
Drafting publication posts under deadline
Your publication editor wants the article by Friday. It is Wednesday and you have not started. The pressure makes typing even slower. Instead, talk through the piece like you are being interviewed about the topic. The words flow because speaking under pressure is easier than typing under pressure. You hit the deadline with time to spare for revisions.
Expanding outlines into full sections
You have bullet points. You need paragraphs. Click into each section of your outline, hold the button, and expand the bullet into a full thought. What would take thirty minutes of typing takes five minutes of talking. Your outline transforms into a draft without the friction of converting notes to prose manually.
Medium has no built-in dictation. Here is how Blurt compares to other options.
| Blurt | macOS Dictation | |
|---|---|---|
| Activation | Hold a button, talk, release | Double-tap Control or click microphone icon |
| Transcription quality | AI-powered, high accuracy with punctuation | Apple's built-in engine, decent accuracy |
| Workflow | Hold-to-record, text appears on release | Tap to start, tap to stop, or auto-stop on pause |
| Punctuation | Automatic, no voice commands needed | Manual, say 'period' and 'comma' |
| Works everywhere | Any text field in any app | Any text field in any app |
| Pricing | $10/month or $99/year, first 1,000 words free | Free with macOS |
Frequently Asked Questions
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