Whisperer
How to dictate on a Mac (free, on-device)
To dictate on a Mac, put your cursor in any text field, press a dictation hotkey, and speak — your words are transcribed straight into that field. macOS has free built-in Dictation, and for a free, private, real-time option that works in every app there's Whisperer, which transcribes your speech entirely on your Mac's Apple Neural Engine — no cloud, no account, no subscription.
The fastest way: dictate anywhere with Whisperer
Whisperer is a free menu-bar app. Once it's set up, you dictate into any app — Mail, Notes, Slack, VS Code, your browser, the terminal — by holding one key. Here's the five-minute setup:
1 · Download Whisperer
Grab the free, ~31 MB DMG and drag Whisperer to your Applications folder.
2 · Open it
Whisperer is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it opens with no Gatekeeper warning.
3 · Grant permissions
Allow Microphone (so it can hear you) and Accessibility (so it can type into other apps). Both are one-time prompts.
4 · Pick your hotkey
Hold ⌥ Space to talk — or set any shortcut you like, as hold-to-talk or tap-to-toggle.
5 · Hold, speak, let go
Put your cursor in any field, hold your key and talk, then release — the finished text lands right where your cursor was, capitalized and punctuated.
macOS 14 (Sonoma)+ · Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) · ~31 MB
Using macOS's built-in Dictation
Prefer Apple's built-in tool? It's free and, on recent Macs, on-device for supported languages:
Turn it on
Open System Settings → Keyboard → Dictation and switch it on. Choose a language and, if prompted, let the on-device model download.
Set the shortcut
Pick the shortcut that starts dictation (the default is pressing the microphone/globe key, or you can set your own).
Dictate
Click into a text field, press your shortcut, and talk. Press it again (or say the stop command) when you're done.
Whisperer vs Apple's built-in Dictation
Both are free, and on recent Macs both run on-device. Whisperer is the pick when you want more languages, cleanup, file transcription, and rock-solid insertion into every app:
| Apple Dictation | Whisperer | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free — every feature |
| Runs on-device | Yes, on recent Macs | Yes, on the Apple Neural Engine |
| Auto-detects your language | No | Yes — ~36 languages, one model |
| Cleans up fillers & self-corrections | No | Optional on-device AI polish |
| Transcribes audio/video files | No | Yes, with speaker labels |
| Custom vocabulary & per-app profiles | Limited | Yes |
Common questions
Yes. macOS includes free built-in Dictation, and Whisperer is a free third-party app with every feature unlocked — no trial, no subscription, no account. Whisperer runs entirely on your Mac's Apple Neural Engine, works in any app, and supports about 36 languages.
Yes. Whisperer works fully offline after a one-time download of its speech model — even in airplane mode. macOS's built-in Dictation also works offline on recent Macs once the language's on-device model has downloaded.
Both are free and, on recent Macs, run on-device. Apple's Dictation is great for quick system-wide use. Whisperer adds live streaming words in a floating panel, one multilingual model that auto-detects about 36 languages, an optional on-device AI polish that removes fillers, whole-file transcription with speaker labels, per-app profiles, custom vocabulary, reliable insertion into any app with a guaranteed clipboard fallback, and it never types into password fields.
Whisperer is a strong choice: it's completely free, runs entirely on-device on the Apple Neural Engine, works in every app, and does about 36 languages. Superwhisper is another on-device option but paid-gates its larger models; Wispr Flow is cloud-based and subscription. If you want free, fully local dictation with no account, Whisperer fits.
In Whisperer, download the multilingual model and it recognizes roughly 36 languages — Arabic, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi and more — and can auto-detect the language you're speaking. The app's own interface is localized into 10 languages, including full right-to-left Arabic.