Voice to calendar: add events by speaking

You can say a plan in three seconds. Typing it into a calendar takes closer to a minute. That difference is why so many plans live in your head instead of your calendar. Voice to calendar is about making the three-second version enough.

The short version

1. Say the plan, the way you would tell a friend.
2. Check the card that comes back: day, time, place.
3. Approve it. It is in your calendar.

The rest of this post is about what makes each step work.

Step 1: say it naturally

There is no special phrasing. All of these work:

• "Parents' evening at the school on Tuesday at six."
• "Dinner at my brother's on Friday, then the airport run at eleven."
• "Team review every Sunday at nine."

The second one becomes two events. The third repeats every week.

You can speak in English or Arabic, or mix the two, and Gulf, Egyptian and Levantine Arabic are understood.

Step 2: check what was understood

This is the step most voice tools leave out, and it is the one that makes the calendar trustworthy. Each plan comes back as a card showing:

• the date, worked out from your time zone ("Tuesday" means the coming Tuesday, never one that has passed)
• the time, or a clear note that you did not say one
• the people and place you mentioned

If anything is wrong, you fix it on the card. If the year was assumed rather than said, the card tells you.

Step 3: approve, and it is in your calendar

Approving is the only thing that saves a plan. Where it goes depends on the calendar you use:

• Google Calendar: connect it once in Settings on utterin.com, and approved plans are added automatically. Changes you make later in UTTER IN update the event.
• Outlook: subscribe to your private UTTER IN calendar link from Settings.
• Apple Calendar: the same private link works on iPhone and Mac.

Why not just ask the phone's built-in assistant?

Built-in assistants can create a single event if you phrase it carefully. They are less good at a natural sentence with several plans in it, and they usually save straight away, so a misheard day goes into your calendar unnoticed. Voice to calendar works best when there is a quick look between speaking and saving.

Try it

Start on the free plan, connect your calendar, and say this week's plans in one go. More detail on how it works.