Voice to text for Mac

Apple Dictation on macOS is fine for a quick line. It transcribes literally, though. Newer versions add basic punctuation, but filler words stay in and the raw dump still needs a tidy-up before it's worth sending.

Superwhisper reads how you speak and adds the punctuation, line breaks, and formatting on its own. Pause to think and it won't type the word "pause." You talk, the cleaned-up text appears. Want to feel the difference first? Run a sentence through talk to text in your browser.

On M1 through M4, the offline models run on the neural engine, so transcription is quick and nothing leaves your Mac. Intel Macs work too, with cloud models doing the processing server-side or smaller on-device models when you want everything local.

Because the audio can stay on your machine, Mac dictation works on a plane or anywhere without signal. That on-device path is also what keeps Superwhisper usable under SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA requirements.

Superwhisper sits in your menu bar and runs at the system level, so it needs no plugins or extensions. If you can type in an app, you can talk to it.

People dictate replies in Mail and Messages, keep up with Slack without typing all day, and talk to Cursor, VS Code, and Xcode while coding. It also drafts in Pages and Notes and fills out forms in Safari. A keyboard shortcut or push-to-talk kicks it off, and you can set it to listen only while you hold a key. You can also drop in a recording and transcribe an audio file when you'd rather not type it out.

The free dictation built into macOS handles short bursts. MacWhisper is a solid file transcriber if that's all you need. Superwhisper covers live typing, AI formatting, and file work in one app, and syncs with iOS so your dictation follows you off the Mac.