Speak to type and voice notes

Speak to type lets you talk instead of typing. When a text box has your cursor in it, a round microphone button appears inside its top-right corner — tap it, speak, and your words are typed where the cursor is. It works in every text box in the app, including boxes inside pop-ups such as "Report a problem".

Voice notes are different: on a checklist answer you record a short recording that stays attached to the answer, and SeaReady turns your words into text in the note so you do not have to type them.

Speak to type and voice notes are on the free trial, Crew, Officer Pro and the ship licence. On the free plan the microphone shows a small padlock and tapping it shows the plans.

1. Tap into any text box. Tap the microphone button that appears in its corner ("Speak instead of typing").
2. Speak normally. The button pulses red while it listens; your words appear in the box as you pause.
3. Tap the square ("Stop dictation") when you have finished, then read and tidy the text as usual.
4. For a voice note on a checklist question, tap "Voice note" on the answer card, speak, and tap "Stop". The app says "Voice note attached" and then, when it can, "Your words are in the note — edit them if needed." The note shows a small player and a delete button.

• If the phone says the microphone is blocked, allow it for seaready.net in the browser or phone settings and try again.
• Number boxes never show the microphone — type the figures. Private boxes (the diary, payslips, ID documents and the tax log) do not show it either, because the phone’s speech service may send audio off the phone.
• On a phone the speech service usually needs a connection. If you get "Speech-to-text needs a connection on this phone", try again with signal or type for now.

• Speak to type uses the phone or browser’s own speech recognition (Chrome, Edge, Safari). Where that is missing, the app records you and the AI turns the recording into text, which needs internet and a plan with AI.
• Voice notes are kept with the answer even offline, but turning them into text needs a connection and an AI plan. If it could not be done, the app says "Voice note kept with the answer" and you can dictate or type the note later; the recording is not sent again by itself.
• A recording sent to the AI must be under 12 MB. Speech-to-text has its own fair-use limit, separate from your daily AI questions.
• Voice notes sync to your other device and, on a ship, to the other phones on the ship, on paid plans and ship licences. Until the recording phone has uploaded one, other phones see "This voice note is not on this device yet".