Set up voice typing on a parent’s Mac

Before you start

This guide is for the person doing the setting up. Do it at your parent’s Mac, with them beside you if you can, so the key and the settings suit their hands.

• Use their own user account. Sign in as them, not as you. Settings belong to each account on the Mac.
• Check the Mac. Open the Apple menu and choose About This Mac. On a Mac with Apple silicon, it shows an item labelled Chip; an Intel Mac shows Processor instead. It also shows the macOS version.
• Decide between two options. The dictation built into macOS is free and works on older Macs too. Take Dictation needs an Apple silicon Mac running macOS 26 or later, and works in English.

Option 1: the dictation already on their Mac

1. Open System Settings, choose Keyboard, go to Dictation and turn it on.
2. If you are asked about sharing audio recordings with Apple, ask your parent. Not Now means Apple does not store recordings of their dictation.
3. Open the Shortcut menu and choose a way to start dictation that they can manage, such as pressing a key twice. If their keyboard has a Microphone key, that works too.

Tell them that it turns itself off after 30 seconds without speech, so a long pause means starting again. How to dictate on a Mac has the rest.

Option 2: Take Dictation

1. Install it and open it. Put it in the Applications folder first. A setup window walks you through three permissions, each in plain words: the microphone (“Let me hear you”), the talk key (“Now, your talk key”; macOS calls this Input Monitoring), and typing for them (“Last one: let me type for you”; macOS calls this Accessibility). For the microphone, macOS shows a box: click Allow. For the other two, setup opens the right page of System Settings and shows you which switch to turn on, and macOS may ask for the Mac’s password. Take Dictation may close and reopen itself after each one; that is expected.
2. Try it once. Near the end, setup asks you to hold the talk key, say anything, and let go. Let your parent do this part.
3. Choose the key and how it works. In Settings, under General, “When I press the talk key” offers Hold to talk, or Tap to start, tap to stop. The key can be the right-hand Option key (the default), the right-hand Command or Control key, or the Fn key. Pick what is easiest for their hands.
4. Leave it to open at login. “Open Take Dictation when I log in” is on by default, so the talk key still works after a restart. If macOS asks for approval under Login Items, allow it.

Show them three things

1. The key. Click where you want to write. Hold the key and talk, then let go, or tap, talk and tap again. The words appear where they were typing.
2. The label at the top of the screen. It shows “Listening…”, then “Cleaning up…”, then “Typing it out…”. There is no sound, so this label is how they know it is listening.
3. What to do if the words don’t appear. Click the Take Dictation icon in the menu bar at the top of the screen, click the dictation in the list to copy it, then press Command-V to paste it. Their last dictations wait in the app’s menu for a week, on that Mac only.

The licence

A licence covers your household: you and the people who live with you, on the Macs you and they personally use. If your parent lives with you, that includes their Mac. If they live in their own home, they need a licence of their own, and they can try it free for 14 days first, with nothing to sign up for. If their Mac is often offline, activate it with the licence file attached to the purchase email rather than the code: opening the file needs no internet connection. The pricing page has the detail.