Dictation for people who find typing hard

Who this is for

Typing is hard for a lot of people, for a lot of reasons: hands that hurt or tire, a tremor, dyslexia, or thoughts that run ahead of your fingers. Writing by voice can help you get words onto the screen with less typing. This page covers what your Mac already offers, what Take Dictation adds, and where to start.

Start with what your Mac already has

macOS has free accessibility features for people who find the keyboard, mouse or trackpad hard to use. Most are in System Settings, under Accessibility; Dictation is under Keyboard. Among them:

• Dictation, for speaking text anywhere you can type. It turns itself off after 30 seconds without speech.
• Voice Control, for controlling your Mac by voice, as well as dictating and editing text.
• Keyboard options that change how sensitive the keys are, or make key combinations easier to press.
• The Accessibility Keyboard, an onscreen keyboard you can use instead of a physical one.

What Take Dictation adds

• One key, held or tapped. Hold the talk key while you speak, or set it to tap to start and tap to stop. Choose the key that suits you: the right-hand Option, Command or Control key, or the Fn key.
• No timer while you think. It listens until you let go of the key, or tap it again, so a long pause does not end what you were saying.
• Less to fix afterwards. It tidies with fixed rules: fillers out, punctuation and capitals in, and spoken corrections such as “Tuesday, no, Wednesday” resolved.
• Your words stay yours. Your voice is processed on your Mac and never uploaded.

It works in English, on an Apple silicon Mac running macOS 26 or later. If you use VoiceOver or Voice Control, we have not finished testing Take Dictation with either, so we do not promise that it works with them yet.

Guides

• When typing hurts your hands: writing on a Mac by voice with carpal tunnel, RSI, tendonitis or arthritis.
• Set up voice typing on a parent’s Mac: for the person doing the setting up.
• How to dictate on a Mac: the shortcut and the fixes for the dictation built into macOS.