DictaSpeech to Text on Mac
Turn speech into text on your Mac. Locally. No cloud servers, no 60-second timeout, no data leaving your device. Just press a shortcut, talk, and get your exact words as text.
How speech to text works on Mac
macOS includes built-in dictation. Enable it in System Settings → Keyboard → Dictation, press the microphone key, and speak. Apple converts your speech to text using their servers.
This works for short inputs. But for anything longer or private, the limitations are real: 60-second timeout, cloud-dependent processing, auto-corrected output, and no transcript history.
Why local speech to text matters
Your audio stays on your Mac
No server receives your voice. Client calls, legal notes, medical dictation — it all stays private.
No latency from server round-trips
Processing happens on your hardware. No waiting for cloud response, no connection drops.
Works without internet
On a plane, in a coffee shop with bad WiFi, or just offline — speech to text keeps working.
Apple Dictation vs Dicta
Three steps
Press ⌥ Space
Speak — up to 4 hours
Press Esc — text pastes at cursor
Works in any app on your Mac. Cursor, VS Code, Slack, Notes, your browser — anywhere you can type.
Questions
How do I convert speech to text on Mac?
macOS has built-in dictation (System Settings → Keyboard → Dictation). For longer recordings, better accuracy, and private on-device processing, Dicta converts speech to text locally without sending audio to any server.
What is the best speech to text software for Mac?
For privacy and verbatim output, Dicta processes audio entirely on your Mac. For cloud-based rewriting, other apps send audio to servers for AI processing. Apple's built-in dictation is free but limited to ~60 seconds.
Can Mac do speech to text offline?
Apple's built-in dictation has limited offline support. Dicta works fully offline — it downloads the language model once, then all processing happens on your Mac without any internet connection.
Explore more: Voice to text on Mac · Mac dictation · Dictation software
Speech to text, privately.
Local processing. No timeout. Your exact words at your cursor.
Download free for macOS