You might have known that you can use your voice to type in Google Docs, but there are some new and improved features. You can now specify text color, highlight text, add links, insert comments, and switch to a column layout–just by using your voice.

• First, in Docs, head to Tools > Voice typing. To use this function, your computer microphone needs to be on and working.

• As you speak, Google will type out what you dictate.

Let’s dive into the new features.

• To change your text color, say something like, “Text color blue,” and the text will change to blue.
• To highlight text, say, “Highlight yellow,” and now the text will be highlighted as you type.
• To add a link to your document, say, “Insert link www.webaddress.com.” The URL will be added to your Doc.
• To delete words, say, “Delete,” which will delete the word right before your cursor. If you want to delete multiple words like a phrase in your Doc, just say, “Delete [phrase],” and the phrase will be deleted.
• To add comments, say, “Insert comment,” and then speak your comment.
• To change your text to a two-column layout, say “Apply two columns.”
• To adjust your alignment, say things like, “Align center.”

We encourage you to play around with it. Google has added so many formatting options to the already extensive list of voice commands that you should be able to achieve most of your formatting goals just by asking the program to take care of it for you. For a list of all the voice commands you can use, click here.

Click here to watch this video on YouTube.