Superwhisper
Superwhisper is a speech to text app for macOS. It lives in your menu bar and works in every app on your Mac. Hit a keyboard shortcut, talk, and the text shows up wherever your cursor is. The AI handles punctuation, formatting, and tone so you don't have to go back and clean things up.
Apple's built-in dictation on macOS is fine for short bursts of text. But it's a literal transcriber. You have to say "period" to get a period. You say "new paragraph" to break lines. The output is a raw dump of words that needs manual cleanup before you can send it anywhere.
Superwhisper takes a different approach. You speak naturally and the AI figures out punctuation, paragraph breaks, and formatting on its own. If you pause, it doesn't insert "pause" into your text. It just handles it.
The bigger difference is context awareness. Super Mode reads what's on your screen and adjusts the output to match. If you're replying to an email in Mail, the text comes out structured like a proper response. If you're talking to Cursor, it stays technical. Apple Dictation doesn't know or care what app you're in.
Language support is another gap. Superwhisper covers over 100 languages with automatic detection. Apple Dictation supports around 60 and you have to manually select the language beforehand.
Superwhisper is a system-level app. It doesn't need plugins or extensions. If you can type in it, Superwhisper works with it.
People use it in Mail and Messages for quick replies. In Slack for keeping up with channels without typing all day. In Cursor, VS Code, and Xcode for talking to AI coding assistants. In Terminal for longer commands. In Pages and Notes for drafting documents. In Safari and Chrome for filling out forms and writing comments.
It sits in your menu bar and activates with a keyboard shortcut or push-to-talk. You can also set it to activate only while you hold a key, which is handy for short bursts.
| Superwhisper | Apple Dictation | MacWhisper | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Live voice typing | Yes | Yes | No |
| AI formatting | Yes | No | No |
| Context-aware | Yes | No | No |
| Offline mode | Yes | Limited | Yes |
| Apple Silicon optimized | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Languages | 100+ | ~60 | 100+ |
| Types into any app | Yes | Yes | No |
| File transcription | Yes | No | Yes |
| iOS sync | Yes | No | No |
"Superwhisper delivers on the dream of an AI-native operating system. The best part: it's insanely fast and does just what you expect."
— Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel
"There's a new kind of coding I call 'vibe coding'... I just talk to Composer with @superwhisperapp so I barely even touch the keyboard."
— Andrej Karpathy, Founder of Eureka Labs
Yes. On Apple Silicon (M1 through M4), the offline models are exceptionally fast because they run on the neural engine. Intel Macs are fully supported too. The cloud models work great on Intel since the processing happens server-side. You can also use smaller offline models on Intel, though they won't be quite as fast as on Apple Silicon.
Yes. Superwhisper ships with on-device speech recognition models. Once downloaded, they run entirely on your Mac with no network connection needed.
Apple Dictation does basic transcription, but you still have to say "period" and "new line" to get punctuation and formatting. Superwhisper handles all of that automatically. It also understands context through Super Mode, so it adjusts tone and structure based on the app you're in. And it supports over 100 languages compared to Apple's roughly 60.
Over 100, with automatic detection. You don't need to tell it which language you're about to speak. You can also dictate in one language and have the text come out in another.
There's a free tier that lasts forever with the core voice-to-text features. Pro starts at $8/month and unlocks Super Mode, cloud models, and longer recording times. If you buy Pro and it's not for you, there's a 30-day refund guarantee.
It works with every app on your Mac. Superwhisper operates at the system level, typing text wherever your cursor is. Cursor, VS Code, Xcode, Terminal, Mail, Slack, Pages, Notes. No plugins or extensions needed.