Voice typing

Google Docs shipped a menu item called Voice Typing in 2015, and Android’s keyboard uses the same words for its microphone key. Both send audio to Google’s servers, transcribe it there, and return text into a Google product. That is where most people first met the phrase, which is why "voice typing" tends to carry an unspoken assumption: it works in one app, and it works in the cloud.

Neither assumption holds for the category as a whole. A voice typing tool on a Mac can type into every app on the machine, and it can run entirely on the machine.

Every modern operating system has voice typing built in: Apple Dictation on the Mac, Voice Typing on Windows, Gboard on Android. They are free, already installed, and fine for a short message. What they tend to lack is the finishing: fillers stay in, numbers and times come out as words, the tone is the same in every app, and there is no vocabulary that learns your names.

A dedicated tool earns its price in the cleanup and in the apps that built-in dictation struggles with, like terminals, code editors, and browser-based apps. If you write a few sentences a day, the built-in one is enough. If you write for a living, the difference is measured in hours a week.

Voice typing on a Mac is the Dictation feature. Once it is on, you can start it three ways, and you can decide which key does it.

1. 01 Choose Apple menu → System Settings, click Keyboard, go to Dictation, and turn it on.
2. 02 Open the Shortcut pop-up menu in the Dictation section and choose a shortcut, or choose Customize and press your own keys.
3. 03 If you want the 🌐 key to do the job, find "Press 🌐 key to" in Keyboard settings and choose Start Dictation.
4. 04 Click where you want the text to go, in any app.
5. 05 Press your shortcut, press the Microphone key in the row of function keys if your keyboard has one, or choose Edit → Start Dictation.
6. 06 Speak, then press the shortcut again or press Escape when you are done.

Dictation listens for one language at a time, so the language has to be added before you can speak it. You can keep several and switch between them without opening settings again.

1. 01 Choose Apple menu → System Settings, then click Keyboard.
2. 02 Go to Dictation and click the Edit button next to Languages.
3. 03 Select each language and region you want, then confirm.
4. 04 Start dictation in a text field.
5. 05 Click the language shown next to the cursor, or press the 🌐 key, to switch to another language you added.

macOS has two features that turn speech into text, and they are built for different jobs. Dictation is voice typing: you start it, speak, and stop it. Voice Control, at System Settings → Accessibility → Voice Control, is for running the whole Mac by voice, including clicking, scrolling, and editing.

Voice Control has three modes. In dictation mode, which is the default, any words that are not commands are entered as text. In command mode, it responds only to commands and ignores other words. In spelling mode, you dictate character by character, which helps with web addresses and similar strings.

You cannot run both at once. When Voice Control is on, standard Dictation is not available. The first time you turn Voice Control on, the Mac must be online to complete a one-time file download from Apple.