The latest Gboard 13.3 beta reveals many upcoming features, but in the short-term it appears to be responsible for the old Google Voice Typing experience reappearing on Android 14.
If you’re running the Android 14 Beta and Gboard 13.3, the system “Choose input method” button, which has a keyboard icon, appears in the bottom-right corner of your screen whenever you’re typing. The list shows Gboard and Google Voice Typing.
Switching to the latter brings up a compact interface with a microphone, backspace, and link to settings that lets you manage languages and downloads. This voice dictation system is independent from Gboard and something used by other apps, like third-party keyboards that don’t offer their own.
On Android 13, even if Google Voice Typing is enabled, it does not appear when Gboard is active. Something about the combination of the latest Gboard and Android 14 betas are responsible for its appearance.
There’s no functional impact here, but if you don’t want the icon every time you open your keyboard, go to: Settings > System > Keyboard > On-screen keyboard and toggle off Google Voice Typing. Otherwise, a feature update should resolve it.
Speaking of Gboard, the latest update is responsible for Settings picking up new About and Help & feedback menus. The former shows Terms of service, Privacy policy, Open source licenses, and Current version.
On a related note, “Speech Services by Google” was recently renamed to “Speech Recognition and Synthesis from Google.” There is no functional impact to this change. The Play Store listing explains how: “Your app has a new name: ‘Speech Recognition and Synthesis from Google’. The Speech Recognition and Synthesis from Google app not only provides text-to-speech but also empowers applications with speech-to-text functionality to convert your voice to text.”
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