When typing hurts your hands: writing on a Mac by voice

The short answer

You can write on a Mac by speaking instead of typing. macOS includes free dictation and Voice Control, and a dictation app can let you start and stop with a single key, held or tapped.

This page is not medical advice. If typing hurts, or the pain keeps coming back, talk to a doctor or a physiotherapist. Dictation will not fix the cause. What it changes is how much you type.

Carpal tunnel, RSI, tendonitis and arthritis

People reach for dictation with all of these, and each one feels different. Some people can type a little but not all day. Some find gripping or pressing keys hard. Some have good days and bad days. Whatever the name for it, the practical question is the same: how to get your words onto the screen with fewer keystrokes, and without having to hold a position that hurts.

Start with what your Mac already has

• Dictation is free and built in. Turn it on in Keyboard settings and start it with a shortcut. It turns itself off after 30 seconds without speech. How to dictate on a Mac has the steps.
• Voice Control lets you control your Mac by voice, as well as dictate and edit text, if you want to use the keyboard and trackpad as little as possible.
• Keyboard options in Accessibility settings can change how sensitive the keys are, or make key combinations easier to press.

Holding a key, or tapping it

Some dictation tools ask you to hold a key down while you speak. For some hands, holding is the hard part. Take Dictation lets you choose: hold the talk key while you talk, or set it to tap to start and tap to stop. You choose the key too: the right-hand Option, Command or Control key, or the Fn key. Pick the one you can press most comfortably.

With either setting, nothing switches off while you think. It listens until you let go of the key, or tap it again.

Fewer corrections by hand

Fixing dictated text means more typing. Take Dictation tidies what you say with fixed rules before it reaches the page: fillers out, punctuation and capitals in, and spoken corrections resolved, so “Tuesday, no, Wednesday” comes out as “Wednesday”. It does not rewrite your words. If you would rather have exactly what you said, you can switch tidying off.

Where to go next

See dictation for people who find typing hard for more guides, or see how Take Dictation works.