TLDR:

• Willow works in any Brave text field with 200ms latency, 3x faster than Apple dictation at 700ms

• You'll speak at 150 WPM versus typing at 40 WPM, saving 73 minutes daily on emails alone

• Willow learns your writing style and remembers corrections, delivering 2x better accuracy than standard tools

• SOC 2 and HIPAA compliant with shared dictionaries for teams handling sensitive work

• Willow offers free trials with 2,000 words weekly and works across Gmail, Notion, ChatGPT, and all web apps

Voice Dictation That Works Anywhere in Brave

Brave has grown to over 82.7 million monthly active users, and most of them spend their day doing real work inside the browser itself. Gmail, Notion, Linear, Slack web, ChatGPT... the text fields are everywhere. The dictation support? Not so much.

Native dictation in Brave is basically an afterthought. You get inconsistent results, no context awareness, and the constant interruption of fixing errors mid-thought. For anyone trying to move fast, that friction adds up quickly.

Willow plugs directly into Brave so you can speak into any text field, on any page, without switching apps or losing your train of thought. Press a hotkey, talk, and your words appear in roughly 200 milliseconds. Willow Voice works the same way in Chrome and other browsers. That's fast enough to feel like typing, except you're doing it at 150 words per minute instead of 40.

Speed is only part of it. Willow learns how you write over time, picking up your tone, your vocabulary, and the specific names or terms you use regularly. The more you use it, the fewer edits you'll need to make. And for teams handling sensitive work, Willow is SOC 2 and HIPAA compliant with zero data retention built in.

Why Built-in Dictation Falls Short in Brave

Most dictation tools treat every text field the same. Type a name, a product term, or a niche phrase? They guess. Usually wrong. In a browser like Brave, where you're jumping between Gmail, Notion, and ChatGPT in the same session, that lack of context awareness becomes a real problem fast.

Apple's built-in voice dictation and tools like Wispr Flow run at 700ms or more of latency. That's over three times slower than Willow's 200ms. It doesn't sound like much until you're mid-thought and watching your words lag behind your voice. That delay breaks concentration in a way that's hard to recover from.

The accuracy gap makes it worse. Standard dictation tools miss specialized terms, names, and context-specific language, which means you spend more time correcting than composing. Willow is 2x more accurate than built-in dictation tools because it understands what you're actually working on instead of only the sounds you're making.

"The most frustrating part of bad dictation is that it slows you down more than just typing would have."

Apple dictation versus Willow comes down to one thing: one was built to be passable, the other was built to replace typing entirely.

How Willow Learns Your Writing Style Over Time

No two people write the same way. Brave users especially tend to bounce between wildly different writing contexts in a single session: a formal reply in Gmail, a quick Slack message, a detailed AI prompt. Generic dictation tools like Wispr Flow and Apple's built-in voice dictation handle all of that the same way. Willow doesn't.

Every time you use Willow, it picks up on your patterns. Correct a name once and it remembers it forever through the auto-dictionary learning engine. Add company-specific terms or industry jargon through a custom dictionary and those words get recognized consistently from that point forward. Over time, your personal accuracy compounds in ways that no out-of-the-box tool can match.

Tone-matching works the same way. Willow reads the destination and adjusts accordingly, making your Gmail drafts sound professional and your Slack replies sound like you. The same spoken sentence can land very differently depending on where it ends up.

The outcome is what we call Zero Edit Dictation. Research shows people typically speak at around 184 words per minute during natural conversation. The goal is for every word at that speed to land exactly right, with no cleanup required after.

150 WPM in Brave: What That Speed Actually Means

Typing at 40 WPM is the average, according to Wonderlic's typing speed benchmarks. Willow gets you to 150 WPM. For Brave power users moving through emails, docs, and AI prompts all day, that gap compounds into hours of reclaimed time each week.

Here's what that looks like in practice:

Latency is where things get interesting. Apple's built-in voice dictation and Wispr Flow run at 700ms or higher per response. At that pace, your voice outruns your screen. Willow's 200ms response keeps up with natural speech, so there's no waiting, no losing your place, no stopping to check if it caught what you said.

For Brave users writing detailed ChatGPT prompts or Notion docs, that 73 minutes saved per day is just math.

Works Across Every Web App You Use in Brave

Willow works in any text field Brave can render. That covers a lot of ground.

Whether you're composing in an email client, writing in a document editor, prompting an AI assistant, logging notes in a CRM, updating a project management tool, or responding in a customer support system, Willow shows up the same way every time. Press the hotkey, speak, and your text appears. No app-specific setup. No workarounds.

• Email clients like Gmail and Outlook web, so you can draft and reply without touching the keyboard.

• Document editors like Notion and Google Docs, where you can write full drafts at speaking pace.

• AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude, so prompting by voice feels as natural as thinking out loud.

• Project management tools like Linear and Asana, where quick voice updates replace slow typed ones.

• CRMs, sales tools, and customer support systems, where logging notes by voice saves real time at scale.

If Brave can open it and it has a text box, Willow works there. You can find the full list of supported apps at willowvoice.com/integrations.

For sales and ops teams especially, this is where Willow pays off fast. Logging CRM notes by voice, drafting follow-ups, and updating tickets in Slack or other tools, all inside Brave without switching context. See how that plays out at willowvoice.com/use-cases/sales-operations.

Enterprise-Ready: Security and Team Features for Brave Users

For teams operating in Brave across healthcare, legal, and financial services, security is a baseline requirement. Willow is SOC 2 and HIPAA compliant with zero data retention, meaning no voice data is stored after transcription. Healthcare, legal, and enterprise teams get exactly that coverage. Offline mode fills the remaining gap, keeping dictation fully local when cloud connectivity isn't available.

The team angle goes beyond compliance. Shared custom dictionaries let entire organizations align on product names, industry jargon, and internal terms, so everyone's dictation outputs consistent language from day one. Shared text shortcuts work the same way, cutting repetitive typing across the whole team at once. See how it works at willowvoice.com/features/shared-dictionary.

Speed matters here too. According to GoodCall's voice recognition latency research, under 300ms latency is perceived as instantaneous. Willow's 200ms keeps every team member in flow, whether they're in a CRM, drafting a proposal, or logging clinical notes. See team and enterprise options at willowvoice.com/solutions/teams and willowvoice.com/solutions/enterprise.

Start Speaking in Brave: Free, No Card Required

Getting started takes about two minutes. Download Willow, set your hotkey, and you're using voice in Brave before your next tab loads. No credit card, no onboarding call, no commitment.

The free trial includes 2,000 words every week, enough to feel the speed difference in real workflows. When you're ready to go full-time, individual plans start at $12/month.

If you're an engineer using Brave to prompt Cursor or Claude all day, voice-first engineering workflows are worth a look before you download.

Otherwise, grab Willow and start speaking. Your keyboard will get a well-earned break.

FAQ

How fast is Willow compared to Apple's built-in dictation in Brave?

Willow runs at 200 milliseconds, over 3x faster than Apple's built-in voice dictation and Wispr Flow, which run at 700ms or higher. That speed keeps up with natural speech so you stay in flow instead of watching your words lag behind your voice.

Can Willow remember company-specific terms and names I use regularly?

Yes. Willow's auto-dictionary learns corrections automatically. Fix a name or term once and it remembers forever. You can also add company jargon and industry terms through custom dictionaries, and teams can share these dictionaries so everyone gets consistent recognition from day one.

Will my voice data be stored if I use Willow for sensitive work in Brave?

No. Willow is SOC 2 and HIPAA compliant with zero data retention, meaning no voice data is stored after transcription. For strict local-only requirements, offline mode keeps everything on your device with no cloud connectivity required.

How does Willow know whether to write formally or casually?

Willow reads the destination and adjusts your tone automatically. The same spoken sentence will sound professional in Gmail and casual in Slack without you changing how you speak.

What's the difference between Willow's 150 WPM and my current 40 WPM typing speed?

Speaking with Willow saves about 74% of your time on writing tasks. A 200-word email takes 5 minutes typing at 40 WPM but only 1.3 minutes with Willow, which means you reclaim roughly 73 minutes per day if you write 20 emails.