This is something that wouldn't be possible even five months ago. The tools to write with voice already existed, but dictating all the brackets and quotes in a programming language? A nightmare. But then AI changed everything.
I'm working at Envio, the fastest blockchain data provider and indexing tooling, and today I'm able to write 100% of my code using AI. So instead of dictating code itself, I use my voice to tell Claude which code it should write. This is the key insight that makes voice coding actually viable.
But let me start from the beginning.
Why I wanted to ditch the keyboard
My main motivation was frustration with the ergonomic setup. I got really used to the Mac keyboard, but working on my laptop is a painful experience for my neck and wrists. For a long time, I wanted to move away from the laptop keyboard to something else. I bought an MX Ergo S mouse and a Glove80 split keyboard, but the learning curve to switch to them was just too much for me.
So I thought — what if I try to get rid of the keyboard completely? Instead of learning to type on a new split keyboard, what if I start speaking instead? Speaking is sometimes even faster than writing. In my case, it's not such a big benefit because I type quite fast, but when you're in a flow, it might win you a few seconds.
WhisperFlow: The first try
I started my experience with WhisperFlow — my colleagues recommended it to me. It was good, but not good enough. So I postponed it for a few months.
But then I finally decided that I'm going to stop using my laptop keyboard. I need a change. Next week, I'm going to start using WhisperFlow 100%. Through friction, but I'll do this.
I quite quickly reached the 2,000 words quota, so I upgraded to the pro plan. The experience was actually quite decent. My workflow is fully AI-driven — I use Claude to write all the code, giving it detailed instructions and following best practices of AI-driven development. And it worked quite well with voice, with some learning period, but it didn't make me sacrifice my performance.
But there were frustrating things. WhisperFlow quite often didn't get me right. The auto-correction helped in some cases, but it didn't fire 100% of the time. You still had to reread the output and fix it from time to time.
Initially, I started fixing errors with the keyboard. But by the second day, I finally switched to MX Ergo as my mouse and used it to select the text with errors. Then I used WhisperFlow again to re-dictate correctly. This worked quite decently.
There's also a command mode where you can select some part of the text, say a command like "fix grammar" or "make this sound more professional", and it sends it to an LLM to return a modified output. An interesting feature, but after discovering it, I actually never used it. The times I tried to use it on a big text to fix grammar, it just said servers are overloaded. So it didn't work. But I think this has decent potential.
Switching to Aqua Voice
After working with WhisperFlow for a week, I had frustrations with it getting only about 80% of my speech right and the need to frequently correct it. So I asked Claude to recommend me a more accurate and fast solution for voice typing. It suggested Aqua Voice, saying that a lot of Reddit users praise its accuracy and speed — they use their own model.
I decided to give it a try. The subscription costs $10, compared to $15 for WhisperFlow. Their own model was available only on the paid plan, and the free model didn't work well.
Aqua Voice was faster, but the accuracy was maybe only a few percent better than WhisperFlow. If you want more accuracy, in my experience, there's almost no difference.
What was frustrating in Aqua Voice is the much worse awareness of cursor placement. In WhisperFlow, if you place your cursor somewhere in the middle of the text and dictate a few words, it just puts them perfectly there. But Aqua Voice always capitalizes the words and adds a dot at the end — super frustrating when editing already written text.
Aqua Voice claims a feature where they can access your page, see the words already present, and use them as context. But I didn't see it used well. They also don't have a command mode like WhisperFlow has (which I didn't use anyway). Still, I think this might be the future of voice typing, so I'd like to have it in my arsenal.
WhisperFlow vs Aqua Voice: The verdict (so far)
| WhisperFlow | Aqua Voice | |
|---|---|---|
| Accuracy | ~80% | Slightly better |
| Cursor awareness | Great | Frustrating |
| Command mode | Yes | No |
| Price | $15/mo | $10/mo |
| Speed | Good | Faster |
For now, I'm going to try switching back to WhisperFlow because I really value the ability to edit parts of written text with voice. Maybe my experience will be frustrating — usually it's much easier to notice when something got worse than subtle improvements. If so, I'll update this article after a few more weeks.
The results
I'm only two weeks into this. This article itself was dictated with Aqua Voice, with some AI formatting afterwards. But here's what I can already say:
My neck got much more relaxed. I almost don't type anything unless I need to write some really specific numbers or code examples for documentation. I also started using a stand for my laptop and having the monitor in a better position for my neck. The Glove80 is still not used — I use the F5 button to start voice dictating on my laptop standing on a stand. It's a bit tough on the hands to reach for it in that position, but it's already much better than it used to be.
I'm quite happy with how it goes. I think voice dictating is the future of programming and how we interact with AI.
What about Claude's built-in voice input?
You might be wondering — Claude has voice input, why not just use that? I tried it, and I didn't like it. The problem is that it automatically sends the message when you finish talking, so you don't have time to actually think.
The way I use a dictating tool is: I press F5 once and start speaking, sometimes with long pauses to think about what I want to say next. When you're typing, it's easier to structure your thoughts — you can pause, reread, adjust. Then I press F5 again to commit the message. With Claude's built-in voice input, whenever you have a pause for a few seconds to think, it just immediately submits what you've said and starts answering you, even though you're not done yet.
Another benefit of a standalone dictation tool is that it works everywhere. I use it in Claude, in Discord, in Telegram, in my editor — anywhere I need to type. I even started using voice dictation on my iPhone via the free Microsoft SwiftKey keyboard app.
If you have any recommendations about other voice dictating tools I should try, give me a suggestion. Follow me on X, and if you're curious, check out HyperIndex — the project I'm working on at Envio. It's an ultra-fast open-source indexing framework for blockchain data, and you can see how my daily work looks like.
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