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Dictate

Text-to-speech Android app

An Android study companion that turns PDFs, photos, and typed text into adjustable, paced dictation.

Status
Shipped
Period
May 2020 - Present
Built with
  • Kotlin
  • Android
  • Google Vision OCR
  • SQLite

What it does

  • Built a native Android app that accepts PDFs, photos, and direct text, then turns the material into sentence-by-sentence dictation for students writing by hand.
  • Designed paced text-to-speech playback that reads a sentence, pauses for writing, and continues, with adjustable sentence length and pause duration.
  • Added real-time auto-save for typed material after a user reported losing their notes, and continued refining the app through reviews, feature requests, and bug reports.
  • Maintained and scaled the app to 90K+ installs and 5K+ monthly active users across more than five years in production.

Why I built it

In India, students often receive assignments that require copying source material by hand. I knew the routine of asking a parent to dictate line by line while I wrote. Dictate began as a way to automate that routine when there was no app built for it.

How it helps students

A student can add a PDF, take photos of a textbook, or type material directly into the app. Dictate reads one sentence at a time, pauses so the student can write, then continues. Both sentence length and pause duration can be adjusted to match the student's pace.

How feedback shaped it

User feedback has guided the app's evolution. When a user reported that their notes had disappeared before they could start dictation, I added real-time auto-save so typed material is saved as it is entered. Reviews and bug reports have continued to shape new features and fixes.

What keeps it going

Dictate has been in production for more than five years, reaching 90K+ installs and 5K+ monthly active users. I still receive reviews from people using it today, which keeps the work grounded in a real problem rather than a one-time project.

How it works

  1. Study material

    PDF, photo OCR, or direct text

  2. Draft

    typed text auto-saves in real time

  3. TTS

    reads one sentence at a time

    pause, write, continue

  4. Writing pace

    adjust sentence length and pause duration

Built for handwritten assignments and refined through user feedback over 5+ years in production.

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