Ever since I broke my wrist I found myself exploring the tools available to minimize the need for actually typing. I am using Windows dictation right now to write this article and I think this will help others find the solution to this problem.

In case you are not familiar with this if you have a newer version of Windows just press the Windows button and H at the same time and you should see a microphone with a dialog box pop up. Speech recognition has improved immensely in the past couple of years so if it’s been a while since you’ve used one last I must say these tools feel like they have finally gotten to the point where they actually are useful.

Since I have been using Windows dictation more I found that sometimes when I activate it that it gets stuck at “initializing” and doesn’t work. This happens sometimes with almost any software running on Windows. It seems the solution is usually to either reboot your computer or if you don’t want to reboot it to open up the Task Manager with Ctrl-Alt-Del. When the task manager pops up, go to Processes and find the “Microsoft Text Input Application.”

Right click this application and select “End Task” then try and restart Windows Dictation with the Windows and H key. For further details you can go here.

I would like to add that this seems to be a fix for programs Windows similar issue where opening they just hang. Hey Microsoft, if you are listening, one improvement to Windows Dictation would be to have a quick key to turn the microphone to listen again instead of having to use the mouse to toggle it on and off!