How to dictate on a Mac

Your Mac can turn your speech into text with Dictation, which is built into macOS. This guide covers how to turn it on, how to dictate, how to set the shortcut, and how punctuation, languages and on-device processing work, and it notes what each of these cannot do. At the end it explains what Yap, our dictation app, adds.

Turn on Dictation in System Settings

Dictation is built into macOS, and Apple says “With Dictation, you can speak to enter text anywhere you can type it.” You switch it on once, in Keyboard settings.

Choose Apple menu > System Settings, then click Keyboard in the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down.)
Go to Dictation, then turn it on.
Click Enable.
If you’re asked whether you want to improve Siri and Dictation, click Share Audio Recordings or Not Now.

The privacy question in the last step is optional. Share Audio Recordings allows Apple to store audio of your Siri and Dictation interactions from your Mac, and Apple “may review a sample of stored audio”; Not Now declines. In macOS Sonoma 14, the second step is worded “Go to Dictation on the right, then turn it on. If a prompt appears, click Enable.” The same steps appear in the macOS Tahoe 26 version of the page.

One thing to know: when Voice Control is on, “you use Voice Control to dictate text; standard macOS Dictation isn’t available.” Once Dictation is enabled, its section of Keyboard settings lists these options: Dictation, Languages, Microphone source, Shortcut, Auto-punctuation, and About Ask Siri, Dictation & Privacy.

Dictate text

With Dictation on, you can speak wherever you can type. How you start it depends on your keyboard: some Macs have a Microphone key in the row of function keys, and every Mac has the Edit menu and the Dictation keyboard shortcut.

In an app, place the insertion point where you want to enter text.
Press the Microphone key if available in the row of function keys, use the Dictation keyboard shortcut, or choose Edit > Start Dictation.
When the cursor is highlighted and pulsing, or you hear the tone that signals your Mac is ready for dictation, dictate your text.
Say the name of a punctuation mark (such as “exclamation mark”), “new line” or “new paragraph” as needed.
When you’re done, press the Escape key, the Microphone key (if available), or the Dictation keyboard shortcut.

On the Microphone key, press and release to start Dictation; press and hold the same key to activate Siri, which must be enabled. On a Mac with Apple silicon, “you can still use the keyboard while you speak; there’s no need to stop dictation.” Apple says “You can dictate text of any length without a timeout”, and Dictation “stops automatically when no speech is detected for 30 seconds.” In macOS Sequoia 15 and Sonoma 14, readiness appears as a microphone icon above or below a highlighted cursor rather than a pulsing cursor.

Saying “new line” is equivalent to pressing Return once, and “new paragraph” to pressing Return twice; both take effect when you finish dictating. You can say the name of an emoji, such as “heart emoji” or “car emoji”. Ambiguous text is underlined in blue; click an underlined word to select an alternative. Apple publishes a list of spoken commands for punctuation, capital letters, symbols and formatting that “are always available while you’re dictating text.”

The Dictation keyboard shortcut

If your keyboard has no Microphone key, or you would rather use keys of your own, you can set the shortcut that starts and stops Dictation.

Choose Apple menu > System Settings, then click Keyboard in the sidebar.
Go to Dictation, click the Shortcut pop-up menu, then choose a shortcut to start Dictation.
To create a shortcut that’s not in the list, choose Customize, then press the keys you want to use.

Apple’s Mac keyboard shortcuts page, published September 14, 2026, lists “Fn-D: Start or stop dictation. You may be able to set a different dictation shortcut in Keyboard settings.” The Shortcut pop-up menu also includes “Press Fn (Function) Key Twice”, which changes the Keyboard setting to “Start Dictation (Press Fn Twice)”; the “Press fn key to” options describe it as “Start Dictation: Starts dictation when you press the key twice (you may be asked to enable dictation first).”

Apple’s Dictation page does not state which shortcut is the default. It says “You can customize the key combination you press to start or stop Dictation” and gives Option-Z as an example of a custom shortcut.

Where the speech is processed, punctuation and languages

Dictation can process your speech on the Mac or send it to Apple, depending on your Mac and your language. The same settings cover automatic punctuation and languages.

To see whether Dictation is processed on the Mac: choose Apple menu > System Settings, click Keyboard in the sidebar, then see the text below Dictation (Dictation must be enabled).
To turn off automatic punctuation: System Settings > Keyboard, go to Dictation, then turn off Auto-punctuation.
To add a language: System Settings > Keyboard, go to Dictation, click the Edit button next to Languages, then select a language and region.

Apple’s page for macOS 27 says to check Keyboard settings to see whether your voice inputs and transcripts for general text Dictation, such as composing messages and notes, are processed on your device and not sent to Siri servers; the macOS Tahoe 26 and Sequoia 15 versions carry the same note. The macOS Sonoma 14 version states that on a Mac with Apple silicon, Dictation requests are processed on your device for supported languages, and no internet connection is required; when you dictate in a search box, dictated text may be sent to the search provider to process the search. On an Intel-based Mac, or in a language that doesn’t support on-device dictation, your dictated utterances are sent to Apple to process your requests. Apple’s privacy notice says your device indicates in Siri Settings or Keyboard Settings whether what you say is processed on your device, and that your audio data is not stored by Apple unless you opt in to Improve Siri and Dictation or Improve Siri & Apple Intelligence.

Auto-punctuation means Dictation “automatically inserts commas, periods, and question marks for you as you dictate” in supported languages; it is not available in all languages, and Dictation itself “is not available in all languages or regions, and features may vary.” Apple’s macOS feature availability page has separate language lists for Dictation, on-device and modeless Dictation (which requires download of speech models), Auto-Punctuation, and dictating emoji. In macOS 27 only, dictation uses an on-device model to improve spelling, punctuation, and capitalization; Apple says this is available in English on Mac models with M3 and later and at least 12GB of unified memory. If you set up more than one language, you can switch as you dictate by clicking the language next to the cursor or by pressing the Globe key if available. Apple describes no removal of filler words or false starts, and no rewriting of what was said.

With Yap

Yap is our hold-to-talk dictation app for macOS. Hold Right Option, speak, and release: Yap transcribes your speech with Apple’s SpeechAnalyzer, tidies the text with a bundled Gemma 3 model run by llama.cpp, and pastes the result into the app in focus. The clean-up pass removes false starts and filler words, and if the clean-up fails, Yap falls back to the raw transcript.

It works in any app where you can type, and it pastes while preserving the clipboard. Speech recognition and the clean-up both run on the Mac, so nothing you say leaves it; after a one-time setup, Yap works offline. Audio is never saved, and the logs record setup and each dictation’s timings and failures, never what was said.

Yap needs microphone access and Accessibility access, which you grant in System Settings under Privacy & Security; Accessibility is what lets it see the hotkey in other apps and paste. It requires macOS 26 Tahoe or newer on Apple silicon (M1 or later). macOS Dictation is built in; Yap is paid software: US$19 once, tax included, for a licence that covers up to 3 Macs and includes every future update. It is free for 7 days with no card, refunds are available within 30 days, and there is no subscription and no account.

Try Yap free for 7 days.

Then $19 once, for up to 3 of your Macs. No subscription and no account.

Download Yap Buy · $19 About Yap

Requires macOS 26 Tahoe or newer, Apple silicon.

Sources

Checked on 13 November 2026.