Take Dictation
Private dictation for Mac: hold a key, talk, and clean text appears at your cursor
About Take Dictation
Take Dictation is a dictation app for Mac that turns speech into clean text at your cursor in Mail, Notes, Messages or anywhere else you type. It is built for the moments when typing asks too much: you hold a key, say what you mean, and a tidy sentence appears. Transcription and cleanup both run on the Mac's own chip, so your voice is never uploaded, there is no account, and the developer never holds your dictation. Cleanup is a fixed set of rules rather than an AI model, so it cannot invent a sentence or change your meaning.
The app needs an Apple silicon Mac running macOS 26 or later and dictates in English. The site reports about 0.2 seconds between releasing the key and the sentence appearing, an internal on-device median. Pricing is a one-time purchase: $39 once for a household licence, with no subscription. A fully featured 14-day trial asks for no payment details, refunds are available within 30 days, and organisation licences are priced on request.
You start by picking a talk key that feels natural, or switch to tap to start and tap to stop if holding a key is hard. Then you speak the way you normally would. You can pause, backtrack and finish the thought, and a spoken correction such as "Tuesday, no, Wednesday" comes out as the version you meant.
When you let go of the key, the app moves through three states shown in its pill: Listening, Cleaning up and Typing it out. The cleaned sentence is typed at your cursor and you carry on, and you can start the next thought before the last one has landed. If you missed the field, your recent dictations wait in the menu for a week, on the Mac.
Activation works with a licence code or a licence file, and the licence works offline. The app sends only an update check, your licence code when you activate with one, and a weekly licence check, never what you said.
- •On-device processing - Voice, transcript and cleanup never leave the Mac. There is no upload, no copy on a server, and the app never asks for an email address.
- •Rule-based cleanup - The default Tidy mode removes fillers and adds punctuation and capitals without changing your meaning. If a rule is not sure, you get exactly what you said.
- •Spoken corrections and My Words - Say a fix the way you would to a person and the app keeps the corrected version. Names, places and specialist terms are taught once and kept on the Mac.
- •Optional email formatting - An opt-in Format mode lays out greetings, paragraphs, lists and sign-off spacing for emails. It stays off until you turn it on.
- •Small details - It notices what is already on the line, so capitals appear only where a sentence starts. It uses the Mac's own microphone so AirPods stay in music mode, and it shows your own words per minute.
Take Dictation suits Mac users who write a lot of email, notes and messages and would rather talk than type, including people who find holding a key hard, since tap to start is an option. People who do not want their voice on someone else's server, or who dislike tools that rewrite their words, get dictation that stays local and only fixes fillers, punctuation and capitals.
Households get one $39 licence for the people who live together, on the Macs they use. Organisations that need dictation to stay private can ask for an organisation licence priced by the number of people. It does not run on Intel Macs and dictates in English only.
Pricing
One time purchase, not a subscription
- Household licence$39 once
- Organisation licenceContact sales
From the vendor pricing page, 2026-11-06
