Getting started on macOS

Dictate is a menu bar app. It has no main window. You hold a key and speak and release the key and the words appear in the app that has focus. This guide takes you from the download to your first dictated sentence on macOS. It needs macOS 14 or later on Apple silicon.

Install from the DMG

Download the DMG from the download page. Open it and drag Dictate onto the Applications folder next to it. Eject the disk image and open Dictate from Applications or from Spotlight. There is no installer and no account to create. The same download is the trial and the paid app.

The first open

Dictate is signed with the publisher's own signing identity and is not notarized by Apple. So the first open shows a message that macOS cannot verify the app. This is expected and you allow it once.

Right click Dictate in Applications and choose Open. macOS shows the message with an Open button. Click Open. If the message shows no Open button then open System Settings and then Privacy and Security and scroll down to the Security section. Next to the line that names Dictate click Open Anyway and confirm with your password or Touch ID. macOS remembers the choice.

The menu bar icon

After the first launch Dictate sits in the menu bar at the top right of the screen as a small microphone. There is no Dock icon and no window opens by itself. Click the icon to see the menu. Start listening or Stop listening toggles hands free dictation. History opens the window with your last 100 transcripts. Settings opens the Settings window. Enter license jumps to the License group of Settings. Quit closes Dictate.

Allow Microphone and Accessibility

Dictate asks for two permissions on the first launch. It fires the system prompts one after the other so you can answer each one.

Microphone lets Dictate hear you while you hold the talk key. The system prompt shows the first time Dictate opens the microphone. Click Allow. Without it Dictate records silence and nothing is typed.

Accessibility lets Dictate paste the recognised text into the app you are using and lets it listen for the hotkeys while another app has focus. macOS does not grant it from a prompt. The prompt opens System Settings on the Privacy and Security pane. Find Accessibility and switch Dictate on. Then open Dictate again so the hotkey listener starts. If you grant it while Dictate is running the Settings window shows a Restart button.

Input Monitoring reads as granted once Accessibility is on with the current macOS so Dictate asks for Accessibility and Microphone alone. On macOS 14 and 15 the two grants are separate and Dictate asks for Input Monitoring after Accessibility is on. The Permissions group in Settings shows each row with its state and one action so you always see what is still off.

The first dictation downloads the model

Dictate turns speech into text with a Whisper model that runs on your computer. Nothing is bundled with the app so the first dictation downloads the model once. The default is the small model at 461.1 MB.

Hold the Right Option key for the first time and Dictate shows a dialog. It names the model and its size and says that it downloads from huggingface.co into the Dictate folder on this computer. Click Download. A progress bar shows the bytes and a Cancel button stops the download and removes the partial files. Once the model is on disk Dictate loads it with no network call on every later launch. You can also start the download from Settings in the Speech group. The Models and languages guide compares the five models.

Dictate your first sentence

Click into a text field in any app. Hold the Right Option key. A small dark pill appears near the bottom of the screen and reads Listening. Speak a sentence at a normal pace. Release the key. The pill reads Transcribing for a moment and then the sentence appears in the field with a capital first letter and a period at the end.

The text lands in whatever app had focus when you released the key. Dictate itself never takes focus and the pill never takes focus either.

Where Dictate keeps its files

Everything Dictate saves lives in one folder named com.x4ops.dictate under Application Support in your Library folder. It holds the settings and the history and the downloaded models and the trial and license records and the log. Delete that folder after you remove the app when you want nothing left behind. Click Remove license in Settings first so the seat of this computer is free for another one.