Big Text
David Gaskill
Displays typed messages or live speech recognition as large text for face-to-face communication.
What Big Text does
Big Text lets you type a message or display nearby speech as large text on an iPhone or iPad. It includes a message library, colour and font choices, and transcript sharing. It can help with face-to-face communication when hearing speech is difficult. The developer says app-generated data stays on the device; that statement does not establish where speech recognition is processed.
How it compares
Speech input as well as Cardzilla-style typed messages
Big Text lets you type a message or turn speech into large text. Cardzilla and Make It Big focus on showing typed messages, which may be enough if you only need to show someone what you want to say.
Saved messages, like Cardzilla, plus transcript sharing
Big Text can recall saved messages and share transcripts. Cardzilla also saves messages for reuse, with a card-and-favourites approach.
Features
Captions
- Supported: Live conversation captions
- Supported: Caption history
- Supported: Typed replies
Transcripts & notes
- Supported: Transcript export
Audio input & output
- Supported: Live outputsOn-screen text
Accessibility
- Supported: Caption display controlsColor
Privacy & data
- Supported: Data storage1Device
- Publisher privacy statement about app-generated data; user-initiated sharing is separate and speech-processing location is not documented.
App Store ratings & reviews
Praise
- Reviews from 2022–2026 describe useful large-text/typing or speech-text communication for family members, including people with hearing or speech difficulties. These personal accounts do not establish clinical benefit or current feature entitlement.
Complaints
- Reviews from 2023–2026 report microphone/dictation failures, language-switching difficulty and word errors. One December 2023 reviewer said enabling Siri resolved their own microphone problem; that is a user workaround, not a universal setup requirement.
Mixed reports
- A May 2026 reviewer valued communication but reported crashes when rapidly toggling listening, retained text at launch, history prompts and difficulty typing while listening. The report concerns that user’s app experience and has no captured version identifier.