Dictave
For macOS
Dictate anywhere on your Mac
Hold one key, say what you mean, let go. The words land where your cursor already is — in any app, in any text field. Your voice is turned into text by your own Mac, and goes nowhere else.
The whole interaction
Three things, and one of them is talking
There is no window to open and no button to find. Dictave waits out of the way until you hold the key.
Hold the shortcut
From wherever you already are. You never leave the app you are working in, and nothing steals your typing focus.
Say it out loud
Talk the way you would talk. Say “comma”, “full stop” or “new line” and you get punctuation, not the words.
Keep working
The finished text is already in your document, at the cursor, ready to edit like anything else you typed.
Watch the loop
What it looks like from your side
A small indicator tells you what is happening — listening, thinking, typing — and then it gets out of the way.
An illustration drawn in your browser — not a recording, and this page cannot hear you. The words are scripted.
Try the real rhythm: press and hold the button — or hold ⌥ Option on your keyboard — wait a beat, and let go.
Everything above is drawn from a script, so it behaves the same for everyone — and lets you feel the hold-speak-release rhythm before you install anything.
What you get
Built to disappear into what you were already doing
Every app, not just one
Mail, your editor, a chat box, a spreadsheet cell, a form in a browser tab. If you can type into it, you can talk into it.
Words while you are still talking
Text can appear as you speak and tidy itself as the sentence finishes — or arrive all at once when you let go. You choose which.
Punctuation you do not think about
Sentences get their capital letters. Say “comma” or “new line” and that is what you get.
The microphone opens when you do
By default it is closed until you hold the key, and closed again the moment you let go. Prefer an instant start? Turn it on knowingly, and macOS will show you it is listening.
A history that is yours
Everything you dictate is kept privately on your Mac and is searchable. Delete one entry, delete all of it, or keep none of it.
Nothing to sign into
No account to create, no sign-in, nothing to activate. Install it and hold the key.
Privacy
Your voice does not go anywhere
This is not a policy written after the fact. It is what the app is able to do, and what it is not.
- Speech becomes text on your own Mac. There is no server in the middle, because there is no server.
- It cannot send your voice, even by mistake. The version you download is built without the ability to open a network connection at all — and that is checked automatically on every single build.
- Recordings are never written to your disk. Audio exists only for as long as you are speaking, unless you go and switch recording on yourself.
- Your history is encrypted where it sits. Locked with a key only your Mac holds, so a copied disk or a stray backup does not give it up.
- Nothing is reported from the app. Usage statistics are off until you turn them on, and never contain anything you said or dictated.
Platforms
macOS today. The rest is being built.
Each one is a real, native application rather than the same window three times, which is slower to build and better to use.
macOS
macOS 13 Ventura or later. One download for Apple silicon and Intel.
Download for MacWindows
In progress. No date is being promised — it appears here when there is a build worth using.
Linux
In progress. No date is being promised — it appears here when there is a build worth using.
The app itself
A look at it running
Questions
The things people ask first
Does it work without an internet connection?
Completely. On a plane, on a train, with the wi-fi switched off — there is no difference, because nothing was going over the network in the first place.
What permissions will it ask for?
Two. The microphone, so it can hear you. And Accessibility, which is what macOS requires before an app may watch for a keyboard shortcut and type into other applications — one permission covers both. Dictave does not read your screen.
Which languages does it understand?
English today, across a range of accents. More languages are on the list, and they will be announced when they are genuinely good rather than merely present.
How accurate is it?
Accuracy is measured against the same fixed set of recordings every time a release is prepared, and a release that scores worse than the one before it does not ship. That is a lower ceiling on marketing and a higher floor on what you actually get.
What does it cost?
The current release is free to download. Pricing has not been decided, and nothing here is a promise about what happens later.
Is the source code public?
Not today. The privacy guarantees are held up by automated checks that run on every build rather than by public inspection, which is a weaker form of proof and worth saying plainly instead of implying otherwise.
Can I delete what it has stored?
Yes — a single entry, the whole history, or you can set it to keep nothing at all. Removing the app removes its data with it.
Try it
Hold a key and start talking
For macOS 13 Ventura or later. Universal — one download runs on Apple silicon and Intel.