MacOS has a built in microphone feature not enough people use

Building on artificial intelligence’s long-term success as a transcription tool, plenty of new AI-powered apps have sprung up in the past few years to apply the added multimodal benefits of generative AI to the same task. Apps like Wispr Flow and Monologue are probably the most popular options available now thanks to their clever combination of extra context (via screenshots or knowledge of the app you’re using) to tweak their output wherever you choose to type with your voice, but free open-source options like Handy exist, too.

Plenty of these tools work well, but they do require additional setup or a paid subscription to be a viable alternative to a keyboard. Luckily, though, if you’re interested in typing with your voice, you don’t actually have to pay for or learn a new keyboard shortcut to get a comparable experience. Both Windows and macOS include a built-in voice dictation feature that can do the majority of the same things as these third-party apps, and all you have to do is know the right key to press or toggle to enable in System Settings. Here’s how I use voice dictation to type with my voice on a Mac.

Apple’s take on voice dictation

Speech-to-text is always a keyboard shortcut away

Apple has experimented with using your voice to control your computer for decades, and has offered voice control as an accessibility feature in the past, but voice dictation didn’t become a system-wide macOS feature until the release of Mac OS X Mountain Lion in 2012. The company’s initial implementation of the feature is pretty similar to what it has now, with microphone icons appearing in certain search boxes, and “Dictation” as the feature is called, only a keyboard shortcut away wherever you enter text. A key difference between the version of the feature offered then and the one that’s available now is the ability to use Dictation without an internet connection, an option Apple added with the introduction of Mac OS X Mavericks in 2013.

The various voice control options expanded again in 2016 when macOS Sierra brought Siri to the Mac, but the biggest change Apple made to how the voice typing experience works came alongside the M1 chip and the redesigned keyboard the company began rolling out to all new Macs. Not only did Apple Silicon apparently make it possible to type and use voice dictation at the same time, but it also added a dedicated microphone button to the default Apple keyboard. If you don’t have a new Mac with a dedicated button for starting and stopping voice dictation, it’s fairly easy to set your own keyboard shortcut:

1. Open System Settings.
2. Click on the Keyboard tab in the sidebar.
3. Scroll to the Dictation section and make sure that voice dictation is toggled on.
4. Click on the Shortcut menu and select one of the preset options or click on Customize to create your own.

How to use macOS’ Dictation feature

Dictation works anywhere you have a text box

With your shortcut set, all you have to do is press it to start or stop voice dictation. This works anywhere you can input text on macOS, and you’ll know it’s working thanks to a small green microphone icon that will appear under your cursor as your voice gets translated to text. To break the process down into steps:

1. Click wherever you want to enter text.
2. Press the Dictation button on your keyboard (marked with a Microphone icon) or enter your Dictation shortcut.
3. Start speaking whatever you want to enter.
4. Press the Dictation button or your shortcut again to turn off voice dictation.

Once you’ve dictated text you’ll likely want to edit it before moving on. You can do that manually, or rely on macOS to catch your mistakes. In the Dictation menu in System Settings, you can enable “Auto-punctuation” to add in the most obvious missing punctuation by default. As you dictate, macOS will also underline words it’s unsure about because they sound similar to other words (for example, “four” and “for” or “flour” and “flower”). You can click on these to select whichever word you actually meant to type or enter your own if Dictation got it wrong. Beyond that, you’re expected to use the correct commands to get dictation to enter and style your text correctly. Apple has a whole support page dedicated to listing these commands, but here’s an example of some of the most useful ones:

• “new line”: starts a new line of text
• “new paragraph”: starts a new paragraph
• “caps on”: writes the next phrase in Title Case.
• “caps off”: turns off Title Case.
• “quote”: adds an open quotation mark.
• “end quote”: adds a close quotation mark.

You don’t have to play around with Dictation for long to see where Apple’s built-in feature comes up short in comparison to its newer, even more AI-powered competitors. It’s generally less flexible and incapable of adapting your writing to a given context. Having tried out Monologue, one of the more popular voice typing apps, I’m not sure that matters, though. Transcriptions that morph in style depending on whether you’re sending an email, a text, or drafting a document really only matter if you plan on shifting all of your text entry to voice typing. In my experience, the place where voice typing felt the most helpful was in getting a lot of text out at once, what you might call a “vomit draft.” From there, I found it much easier to make edits the old-fashioned way. If that resonates with you, then you might have everything you need with macOS. And that way, you don’t have to download an extra app or pay for a subscription.

Voice dictation can save time and energy

Sometimes it’s faster to say what you mean

Like many of AI’s current uses, outside of improved accessibility, voice typing might always cater to a small audience who prefer talking out what they want to type. Having the option, and on newer Macs, the ability to switch between talking and typing on the fly, can definitely save time, though.

Developer

Every

Subscription cost

$10/month, $100/year

Free trial

Yes

Every’s Monologue is a voice dictation app for iOS and macOS that uses AI to clean up your writing so that your transcribed text always has the right tone for whatever app you’re writing in.

Ultimately, that’s what makes features like this most useful, and, given Apple’s growing interest in AI, there’s no telling the ways Dictation could be expanded in future versions of macOS. You can use an app like Monologue if you’re looking for a taste of that more futuristic experience now, or if you want a more limited version of voice typing you could try using Google’s take on the feature anywhere you can access Google Docs.