Nothing’s Essential Voice: A System-Level Dictation Tool That Actually Makes Sense

Let’s be real: the dictation app space is getting crowded. Between Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, Willow, and Monologue, there’s a new one every week. Most of them do the same thing — turn speech into text, strip out the “ums” and “ahs,” and claim to save you time. Nothing, the hardware company behind those transparent earbuds and the Phone (3), just dropped its own take called Essential Voice. And honestly? It might be the most practical one yet.

Here’s the gist: Essential Voice works in any app. You speak, it types. It removes filler words automatically, which is a godsend if you’ve ever dictated a message and had to manually delete half of it. You can also create custom voice shortcuts — like saying “my address” to paste your full address, or “signoff” to drop in a standard email closing. That’s not new, but Nothing’s implementation feels faster than most third-party options because it’s baked into the system.

At launch, Essential Voice is available on the Phone (3). Nothing says the Phone (4a) Pro will get it later this month, and the regular Phone (4a) will follow next month. So if you’re on older Nothing hardware, you’re out of luck for now.

The average person types 36 words a minute on a phone. But, they can say it four times faster. Essential Voice turns your speech into clear, ready-to-use writing. pic.twitter.com/l08bnS8sNF
— Essential (@essential) April 23, 2026

To trigger it, you press the Essential key (if your device has one) or activate it from the keyboard. That’s a small but important detail — it’s not buried in settings or hidden behind a gesture. It’s just there. This is similar to what Superwhisper did earlier this week for iPhone users, letting them map the Action button to its dictation keyboard. But Nothing’s approach is more elegant because it doesn’t require remapping; the hardware key is purpose-built.

One feature that genuinely surprised me: Essential Voice can translate text directly between languages. It supports over 100 languages at launch. I tested it with a quick German phrase, and it handled it better than I expected for a first-gen tool. Nothing also plans to introduce app-based custom styling later, so you can set different tones for work vs. messaging. That could be useful if you want your Slack messages to sound professional but your texts to stay casual.

The big differentiator here is the system-level integration. Nothing is one of the first companies to offer this — most dictation tools are third-party apps that overlay on the keyboard or require constant background access. Google recently released an offline dictation app, but it’s not as deeply integrated. If Nothing keeps iterating, Essential Voice could become a real selling point for their phones.

Is it perfect? No. The voice shortcut setup is a bit clunky — you have to type out the expansion text manually instead of recording it. And I’d like to see support for older Nothing devices. But for a first release, it’s solid. If you’re on a Phone (3) and do a lot of typing, give it a shot. Your thumbs will thank you.