Here’s a moment I bet you know. You’re typing a long message, your hands are tired, and you think: I could just say this out loud. You can. Voice dictation on a Mac is built in, it’s free, and it takes about a minute to turn on.
And it’s worth it. A 2016 study by researchers at Stanford University and Baidu found that speech input was about three times faster than typing on a phone keyboard, with fewer errors. Let me walk you through it step by step.
How to turn on dictation on a Mac
This part is really easy:
- Open System Settings and click Keyboard.
- Scroll to Dictation and switch it on.
- Pick your language, then open the Shortcut menu and choose the one you like, such as pressing Control twice. Many newer MacBooks also have a microphone key in the top row that starts dictation.
Now click into any text box, press your shortcut, and start talking. Press it again, or click Done, when you’re finished. That’s it. You’ve got this.
Commands worth learning
Since macOS Ventura, dictation adds commas, full stops and question marks for you as you speak. A few spoken commands still help:
- “New line” and “new paragraph” to break up your text.
- “Question mark” or “exclamation mark” when you want to be sure.
- “Smiley face” adds 🙂, which is either delightful or dangerous.
On Macs with Apple silicon, Apple says dictation is processed on your device for many languages, so your words don’t need to leave your Mac.
Tips for cleaner dictated text
- Speak in whole phrases. Dictation gets context from full sentences, not single words.
- Pause instead of saying “um”. Fillers often end up in your text.
- Use a decent microphone. AirPods or a headset beat a laptop mic in a noisy room.
- Fix later, not during. Stopping to correct every word breaks your flow.
Where built-in dictation falls short
Here’s the thing. People don’t talk like they type. We change our minds halfway through a sentence. Say “meet you at 5 PM, oh no sorry, 5 AM” to standard dictation and you’ll get exactly that, typed out word for word. Then you clean it up by hand, which takes away most of the speed you gained.
Dictation that types what you meant
This is the problem we wanted to solve in NotchMemo. Put your cursor in any text box, hold the fn key and talk. When you let go, it types the cleaned-up version:
- “Meet you at 5 PM, oh no sorry, 5 AM” becomes “Meet you at 5 AM.”
- Saying “scratch that” deletes the last sentence.
- Ums, uhs and repeated words are removed, and capitals and punctuation are added.
It works in WhatsApp, Slack, Mail, Notes and your browser. Speech is recognised on your Mac by Apple, and dictation is never sent online. You can even pick a different talk key, like Right Command or Right Option.
Start with one message today
You don’t need to dictate everything. Try your next long message out loud and see how it feels. Once you do it a few times, it becomes second nature. If you want the cleaner version, our setup guide gets NotchMemo running in about five minutes.