Build a Speech-to-Text App with React Native: A Step-by-Step Guide

Building a Simple Transcription App with React Native

Are you curious about how voice assistants like Siri and Alexa understand what you say? The answer lies in speech recognition technology, which converts spoken words into text. In this article, we’ll explore how to build a simple transcription app using React Native and the React Native Voice library.

Why Choose React Native?

React Native is a popular framework for building native mobile apps for iOS and Android. Its benefits include:

• Faster performance
• Smaller file size
• Better support for third-party libraries
• Open-source community

Getting Started with React Native Voice

To start building our transcription app, we need to install the React Native Voice library. This library provides several event-triggered methods for handling speech recognition, including:

• onSpeechStart: Triggered when the app recognizes that someone has started speaking
• onSpeechRecognized: Activated when the app determines that it can accurately transcribe the incoming speech data
• onSpeechEnd: Triggered when someone quits speaking and there is a moment of silence
• onSpeechError: Triggered when the speech recognition library throws an exception
• onSpeechResults: Triggered when the speech recognition algorithm has finished transcribing and returned
• onSpeechVolume: Triggers when the app detects a change in the volume of the speaker

Building the Transcription App

To create our transcription app, we’ll use the React Native CLI command line utility. We’ll also need to install the React Native Voice dependency and add permissions to use the microphone and voice recognition on iOS.

Here’s an example of how to use the React Native Voice library to start and stop voice recognition:

import React, { useState, useEffect } from 'react';
import { View, Text, Button } from 'react-native';
import Voice from '@react-native-voice/voice';

const App = () => {
const [recognized, setRecognized] = useState('');
const [started, setStarted] = useState(false);

useEffect(() => {
Voice.onSpeechStart = onSpeechStart;
Voice.onSpeechRecognized = onSpeechRecognized;
Voice.onSpeechEnd = onSpeechEnd;
Voice.onSpeechError = onSpeechError;
<pre><code>return () => {
  Voice.destroy().then(Voice.removeAllListeners);
};
</code></pre>
}, []);

const onSpeechStart = (e) => {
console.log('onSpeechStart: ', e);
};

const onSpeechRecognized = (e) => {
console.log('onSpeechRecognized: ', e);
setRecognized(e.value[0]);
};

const onSpeechEnd = (e) => {
console.log('onSpeechEnd: ', e);
};

const onSpeechError = (e) => {
console.log('onSpeechError: ', e);
};

const startRecognizing = async () => {
try {
await Voice.start('en-US');
setStarted(true);
} catch (e) {
console.error(e);
}
};

const stopRecognizing = async () => {
try {
await Voice.stop();
setStarted(false);
} catch (e) {
console.error(e);
}
};

return (

<button title="Start Recognizing"></button>
<button title="Stop Recognizing"></button>
Recognized: {recognized}

);
};

export default App;

Conclusion

Building a simple transcription app with React Native is a great way to learn about speech recognition technology. By using the React Native Voice library, you can easily integrate voice recognition into your app and provide a unique user experience.

You can further enhance your transcription app by adding features such as:

• Searching through transcribed texts
• Sharing transcriptions with others
• Exporting transcriptions into other formats

I hope this article has been helpful in getting you started with building your own transcription app. Happy coding!