Dictation software for Mac: dictate into any app, processed on your Apple chip

SpeechToWork runs on any Mac with Apple silicon, so M1 or later, with macOS 14 or later. The minimum is 8 GB of memory and 10 GB of free disk space; 16 GB of memory is recommended. Macs with an Intel processor are not supported.

• The installer is about 87 MB; you drag the app into your Applications folder.
• On first start, SpeechToWork downloads the language models once, 4 to 6 GB depending on your Mac.
• The language model runs via Metal on the graphics part of the Apple chip. Macs have no separate graphics card, and none is needed.
• The Mac version is signed and notarised by Apple.

There is no plugin and no integration. SpeechToWork remembers the app that was active when you pressed the key and inserts the finished text there: Apple Mail, Outlook, Word, Pages, Teams, Slack, your browser or your industry software.

1. Put the cursor in a text field.
2. Hold the right Command key, the default record key on a Mac, and speak freely.
3. Let go. The tidied-up text appears at the cursor.

• Spoken punctuation and “new paragraph” are carried out.
• Numbers appear as digits: 1,500 units, £12.50, 3%.
• Filler words and self-corrections disappear, your tone stays.
• If you want it word for word, switch the rewriting off.

macOS comes with its own Dictation feature. You turn it on under System Settings > Keyboard > Dictation and start it with the Microphone key or a keyboard shortcut. According to Apple, general dictation is processed on the device once the speech models are downloaded. For a quick note or a short message, that works well.

In office work, three limits show up:

• A transcript, not finished text: Dictation writes down what you say. It adds commas, full stops and question marks automatically in supported languages, but self-corrections such as “by Wednesday, no, by Thursday” stay in.
• No office work beyond dictation: call notes with tasks, meeting minutes, reading receipts or an email in your own style from a few keywords are not part of Dictation. Rewriting and proofreading are available through Apple Intelligence Writing Tools, as a separate step after dictating.
• Not every dictation stays on the Mac: according to Apple Support, dictation in a search box is not processed on the device. Anything not processed on the device is sent to Apple's servers.

Setup, commands and privacy of the Apple feature, with all sources, are covered in our guide to Mac dictation.

Speech to text on a Mac with SpeechToWork means: speech recognition (Parakeet) and the language model (Gemma, run with llama.cpp) are files on your Mac and run there. Dictations, texts, recordings and receipts are not sent anywhere, neither to us nor to an AI provider.

SpeechToWork only goes online to download the models once and to check your licence. After that you can dictate on a train or without Wi-Fi. How this works technically is explained in our guide to local AI, the data protection side in the guide to GDPR-compliant AI.

The Mac version does everything the Windows dictation software does, at the same price:

• Dictation into any app, word for word or tidied up.
• Finished emails in your own style from a few keywords.
• Select text and say what should happen: shorter, more formal, translate, check spelling.
• Call notes after a phone call, with tasks and dates.
• Meeting minutes from Teams, Zoom or Meet, without a bot in the meeting.
• Summarise and ask questions about documents and audio files.
• A Memory for details you use again and again, and reading receipts.

Prices are the same on both systems, per user plus VAT: Dictate at 19 € a month, Assistant at 39 € a month. You can try it for 14 days without payment details.

macOS asks before any app may notice keys in other apps, use the microphone or see the screen. SpeechToWork walks you through the permissions on first start, opens the right page in System Settings and shows what has already been granted.

Accessibility and Microphone take effect immediately, no restart of your Mac needed. A picture of the screen is only taken when you trigger it yourself.