Sotto
Sotto is a keyboard with a mic key on it. Tap the key, say what you meant to type, tap it again, and the words land in whatever app you were already in.
Get it
Typing is free forever on both. Dictation is free the first week, then it's a monthly subscription. I'm not putting a number here because Apple and Google each charge their own price depending on where you are, and it changes.
What you are installing
Otherwise it's a plain keyboard. Letters, numbers, symbols, shift, backspace, return. The mic sits in the row with them instead of being a mode you go and turn on somewhere else. Before you install: dictation is US English in this version, nothing else yet. And there's a toggle that pulls the um and the uh out before the words get typed. I left that one on.
Setting it up
Settings, on-screen keyboards, switch Sotto on, pick it. The mic key asks for the microphone the first time you tap it, and that's the end of the setup.
With no signal
Does it work with no signal? Depends on the phone. On iPhone, if the phone can do on-device recognition it just works with no signal. On Android 13 or later, if the phone has Google's on-device speech service, Sotto uses that, and the first time you tap the mic it may have to download the US English pack, so do that once with a connection. Older phones, or ones without that service, get Google's regular recognizer, which can send your audio to Google and usually just errors out offline. I check with airplane mode, but look at the Wi-Fi icon after, since a lot of phones leave Wi-Fi on and then you haven't tested anything.
Privacy policy
Effective: September 27, 2026
Your voice and what you type never come to me. On iPhone it uses Apple's Speech framework and asks for on-device recognition whenever the phone can do it.
Android's a bit different. I send your voice to whatever speech recognizer the phone has and ask it to stay offline. On Android 13 and up, if the phone has Google's on-device speech service, that's what runs, and it does stay offline. Older phones, or ones without that service, get Google's regular recognizer, and that one can send the audio to Google. The app has internet permission because Play billing needs it to check your subscription, and so it can send the app stats I mention further down.
The mic only opens when you tap the mic key, and what you said is kept just long enough to turn into text, so there's no audio file and nothing ever comes to me. The keyboard doesn't log your keystrokes or send them anywhere either, they just go into whatever app you're typing in.
What's stored on the phone is your settings plus any transcript that hasn't been inserted yet, and deleting the app deletes both. The app sends me anonymous stats through PostHog, same as this website does. Stuff like "opened the app", "finished setup", "saw the paywall", "bought it", "turned key preview off". None of it has your name on it and none of it has anything you said or typed in it. PostHog guesses a rough location from your IP. If I change this policy I'll put the new date at the top.
Support
Something broken, or a transcript that came out wrong? Write to support@handled.tools. Mention which app you were typing in, that is usually the thing that explains it.
Terms of use
Sotto is provided as-is, with no warranty. Speech recognition gets things wrong, and it gets names wrong more than anything else, so read what it wrote before you send something that matters.
Sotto Pro is an auto-renewing subscription at US$4.99 per month, or the equivalent in your local currency, starting with a free week. On Android the charge goes to your Google Play account when the free period ends, and it renews each month until you turn off auto-renewal under Payments and subscriptions in the Play Store. Cancelling stops the next charge; the time you have already paid for runs to the end of its month. On iPhone it bills through your Apple Account instead, and Apple's standard EULA applies there.
Dictation itself keeps working without a subscription for the first 7 days after you first open the app. After that the mic key asks you to subscribe, and the letters carry on either way.
Sotto · handled.tools