How to Dictate on a Mac

How do you turn on dictation on a Mac?

You turn it on once in Keyboard settings, and it then works in every app where you can type: Mail, Messages, Notes, Pages, Word, Google Docs in your browser, Slack.

• Open the settings. Apple menu > System Settings, then Keyboard in the sidebar (scroll down if needed).
• Turn on Dictation, then click Enable. macOS asks if you want to share audio recordings to improve Siri and Dictation: click Not Now to say no.
• Pick your language. Next to Languages, click Edit and choose the language and region you speak, for example English (United States). You can add more than one.
• Check the microphone. The Microphone source menu shows which device is listening. On Automatic, your Mac picks the one you are most likely to use.
• Look at the shortcut. The Shortcut menu shows the key that starts dictation. You can change it at any time.

These steps follow Apple's guide for macOS 27. On an older Mac, pick your macOS version at the top of the same Apple page; on macOS 12 and earlier, the menu is called System Preferences, not System Settings.

How do you start and stop dictation?

Click where the text should go, then start dictation in one of three ways: the Microphone key in the top row (if your keyboard has one), Fn-D, or Edit > Start Dictation in the menu bar. Speak when the cursor is highlighted and pulsing, or when you hear the start tone. To stop, press Escape, the Microphone key or your shortcut; dictation also stops by itself after 30 seconds without speech.

• No time limit. Apple says you can dictate text of any length.
• Type while you talk. On a Mac with Apple silicon, you can use the keyboard during dictation to fix a word, without stopping it.
• Press, don't hold. Press and release the Microphone key to dictate; press and hold it and you get Siri instead.
• Change the shortcut. System Settings > Keyboard > Dictation > Shortcut, then Customize and press the keys you want, for example Option-Z.
• Switch languages on the fly. If you set up more than one language, click the language label next to the cursor, or press the Globe key, and pick another one.

What are the voice commands for punctuation and formatting?

In English, Mac dictation adds commas, periods and question marks for you; for everything else, say the name of the mark where it should go. The most useful commands, from Apple's list:

Example, not a measured test. You say: "Thanks for the update new paragraph can we move the call to Thursday at 3 p.m. question mark". You get two lines: "Thanks for the update." and "Can we move the call to Thursday at 3 p.m.?" If automatic punctuation gets in the way, turn off Auto-punctuation in System Settings > Keyboard > Dictation.

What do you do when dictation types the wrong word?

Click the word underlined in blue and pick the right suggestion, or retype it: your Mac underlines the words it is not sure about. Apple's own example: you meant "flower" and got "flour".

• Speak normally, facing your Mac, with nothing covering the microphone, not too quiet and not too loud.
• Avoid noisy rooms or rooms with echo; if you can't, Apple suggests a headset microphone.
• For names and jargon, standard dictation has no dictionary. Voice Control, in System Settings > Accessibility, takes up to 1,000 custom vocabulary terms (the Vocabulary button is dimmed if your language doesn't support it). But when Voice Control is on, it replaces standard dictation.

Why is Mac dictation not working?

Most of the time, one setting is off: Dictation is disabled, the shortcut changed, the wrong microphone is selected, or Voice Control is on. Go through these checks in order, then test in Notes before blaming the app you were in.

Does your Mac send your voice to Apple when you dictate?

On a Mac with Apple silicon, dictation in supported languages, English included, is processed on your device with no internet connection; on an Intel Mac, what you dictate is sent to Apple.

That is what Apple's guide for macOS 14 says, and the macOS Feature Availability page lists English (United States, United Kingdom and more) among the on-device dictation languages. Two caveats from Apple: when you dictate in a search box, the text can go to the search provider; and if you turn on Improve Siri & Dictation, Apple stores audio of your interactions and may review a sample. The text below Dictation in your Keyboard settings tells you what applies to your Mac.

What can't Apple Dictation do?

It writes what you say, but it doesn't adapt the tone to the app, doesn't learn your names, can't write in another language than the one you speak, and its AI cleanup needs a recent Mac.

For a few words in a search box, Apple Dictation is enough. If you write emails and messages all day, the time goes into rereading and fixing. The other Mac dictation apps people compare are Wispr Flow, which transcribes in the cloud, Superwhisper, MacWhisper, Aqua Voice and VoiceInk. Side by side: Ora Voice vs Wispr Flow, Ora Voice vs Superwhisper, and the full market in the best speech to text apps for Mac.

How do you get text that is ready to send on the first try?

Dictate with an app that cleans up the text while you speak: with Ora Voice, you talk the way you think, and the text arrives punctuated, without the hesitations, in the tone of the app you are in. Transcription and translation, 100% local.

Example, not a testimonial: a consultant has six follow-up emails to send before a meeting. She opens Mail, starts Ora and answers the first client as if he were on the phone, hesitations included. The text arrives without the "ums", in the polished style she picked for email, with her signature dropped in by a voice shortcut and the client's name spelled right: she added it to her dictionary last week, when Ora suggested it. At 40 words per minute, the average typing speed, a 150-word email takes almost 4 minutes to type; people speak 152 to 170 words per minute in conversation, so it takes about one minute out loud, plus a quick reread.

On a Mac with Apple silicon, Ora works in every app where you can type. Your dictionary, voice shortcuts and styles sync with your account, so you find them everywhere. It understands 25 spoken languages; its accuracy has been measured in French, where it got 4.86% of words wrong on the 676 French recordings of the public FLEURS benchmark (17,995 words, October 17, 2026), against 5.96% for OpenAI's Whisper large-v3-turbo on the same recordings (method, in French). To dictate in one language and send in another: voice to text translation on Mac.