Using your voice to describe a migraine

Typing on a phone is no fun, especially when your head hurts. You can speak instead, and MigraineMe will turn your words into writing for you. It works well. Give it a try.

This is part of step 2 of the wizard, Paint the picture.

Where the voice button is

1. Open the app and tap the Log tab.
2. Tap Log Migraine.
3. Tap Next to move past the timing screen.
4. You are now on Paint the picture, the screen with the big empty box.
5. Just below the box, on the left, you will see a purple button with a small microphone icon and the word Voice.

How it works on iPhone

1. The first time you tap Voice, the phone asks for two permissions: the microphone and speech recognition (dictation). Tap Allow for both. You only do this once.
2. Tap Voice. The button turns red and changes to Stop.
3. Speak naturally, in normal sentences. Take your time. Pause if you need to.
4. As you speak, your words appear in the big box above.
5. When you are finished, tap the red Stop button.

How it works on Android

1. Tap Voice. Your phone's speech window opens, with a prompt asking you to tell it about your migraine.
2. Speak naturally. The first time, your phone's speech service may ask permission to use the microphone. Tap Allow.
3. When you stop talking, the window closes on its own and your words are added to the box.
4. Want to add more? Tap Voice again and keep going. New speech is added to what is already there. It does not erase the existing text.

What to say

Speak the way you would tell a friend on the phone. Something like:

"I woke up this morning around half past six with a pounding pain behind my right eye. I felt a bit sick. I took a paracetamol around seven and went back to sleep for two hours. The pain eased off but did not go away completely."

That is a perfect entry.

Fixing what was heard wrong

Speech recognition is good but not perfect. If a word is wrong:

1. Tap inside the box where the words are.
2. Tap right next to the wrong word.
3. Use the keyboard to delete it and type the correct word.
4. Or tap Voice again and add a correction by speaking.

Letting the app fill in the rest

Once you have spoken your description:

1. Tap the Find matches button next to the Voice button.
2. MigraineMe reads your words and pre-fills symptoms, pain location, medicines, triggers and reliefs on the next screens.
3. You can correct anything that is wrong.

Moving on

1. Tap the purple Next button at the bottom right.
2. You will continue to the next step.

If the voice button does nothing

If tapping Voice does nothing, or no words appear when you speak, permission is probably switched off.

On iPhone

1. Close the app.
2. Open the grey Settings app on your phone (the one with the gear icon).
3. Scroll down and tap MigraineMe.
4. Make sure Microphone and Speech Recognition are both switched on (green).
5. Open MigraineMe again and try Voice once more.

On Android

On Android the Voice button uses your phone's own speech service (usually the Google app), so that is where the microphone permission lives.

1. Close the app.
2. Open the Settings app on your phone.
3. Tap Apps, then find and tap Google.
4. Tap Permissions.
5. Make sure Microphone is set to Allow.
6. Open MigraineMe again and try Voice once more.

If you see a message saying "Voice input not available", your phone does not have a speech service set up. This usually means the Google app is disabled or missing. Turn it back on and try again.