How to dictate on a Mac or MacBook: the shortcut, the fixes, and when to use something else

The short answer

Turn on Dictation in Keyboard settings. Click where you want the words to go, then press the Microphone key, use your dictation shortcut, or choose Edit, then Start Dictation. Speak, and your words appear at the cursor. The steps are Apple’s and work the same way on a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, MacBook Neo or desktop Mac. Not every keyboard has a Microphone key, and a few features depend on your Mac’s chip and macOS version.

Turn dictation on

1. Open System Settings and choose Keyboard. You may need to scroll down the sidebar.
2. Go to Dictation and turn it on, then click Enable.
3. If you are asked whether to help improve Siri and Dictation, choose Share Audio Recordings to let Apple store audio of your dictation, or Not Now. You can change this later in Privacy & Security settings, under Analytics & Improvements.

Whether your speech is processed on your Mac or on Apple’s servers depends on your language and settings. Is Mac dictation private? shows how to check.

Start and stop

Click where you want the text, then start dictation in any of three ways: press the Microphone key in the row of function keys, if your keyboard has one; use your dictation keyboard shortcut; or choose Edit, then Start Dictation, in the app you are writing in. Press and release the Microphone key: holding it down starts Siri instead, if Siri is turned on.

When the cursor pulses, or you hear a tone, start talking. On a Mac with Apple silicon you can keep typing while dictation is on.

To stop, press Escape, the Microphone key or your shortcut. There is no limit on how long you dictate, but dictation turns itself off after 30 seconds without speech. Why it stops after 30 seconds explains what to do about that.

Change the dictation shortcut

In Keyboard settings, go to Dictation and open the Shortcut menu. Pick one of the options, such as pressing a key twice, or choose Customize and press the keys you want, for example Option-Z. Choose something you can press without looking or stretching.

Punctuation, new lines and emoji

In supported languages, dictation adds commas, full stops and question marks for you. You can turn that off in Keyboard settings with Auto-punctuation. You can also say punctuation out loud, such as “exclamation mark”, say “new line” or “new paragraph”, or say the name of an emoji, such as “heart emoji”. New lines and paragraphs appear when you finish dictating.

When a word could be read two ways, dictation underlines it in blue. Click it to choose another word, or type the right one.

If it doesn’t work

• Check that Dictation is turned on in Keyboard settings.
• Check the microphone. In Keyboard settings, under Dictation, the microphone source shows which microphone dictation is listening to. Choose another if it is wrong.
• Check whether Voice Control is on. When it is, you dictate through Voice Control and standard Dictation is not available.
• If your dictation is processed on Apple’s servers, check your internet connection. Apple’s troubleshooting page, linked below, lists more checks.

When to use something else

Built-in dictation is free and good for a sentence or two. If you write longer emails and documents by voice, pause to think, or want your words tidied without anything rewriting them, a dictation app is worth a look. Take Dictation runs on your Mac and listens while you hold the talk key, or between two taps if you prefer. It tidies with fixed rules: fillers out, punctuation and capitals in, spoken corrections resolved. It costs $39 once for your household, with a fully featured 14-day trial. Is built-in dictation good enough? compares the two side by side.