Speechy vs Apple Dictation
Apple Dictation is free and already on your Mac. Speechy adds hold-to-talk, clean text, spoken lists, your own words, several languages at once, a history, coding agents in the notch, and it ignores the people around you.
Apple Dictation is free, built in and good at plain transcription. If it works for you, keep using it. Speechy is for people who dictate a lot and keep running into its limits: it stops when you pause, it cannot make a list, it has no place for your own words, and it keeps no history. Here is everything Speechy adds, with real examples.
At a glance
| Speechy | Apple Dictation | |
|---|---|---|
| Hold a key to talk | Yes, hold Fn (or tap it for hands-free) | No, press a shortcut to start and stop |
| Long pauses | Listens until you let go | Stops after 30 seconds of silence |
| Ums, restarts, "sorry, I mean" | Cleaned up | No cleanup settings |
| Spoken lists | "Number one, number two" becomes a list | No list commands |
| Your own words and snippets | Dictionary, replacements and snippets | No vocabulary in Dictation |
| Several languages | Several in one dictation | One at a time |
| Ignores other people's voices | Yes, with Only My Voice | No |
| History of what you said | Yes, searchable, on your Mac | No |
| Where your voice goes | Always your Mac | Your Mac for most languages, Apple's servers for some |
| Claude Code and Codex | Questions, permissions and plan limits in your notch | No |
| Price | Lifetime from $99, or Pro at $12.99 a month | Free |
Hold to talk, and pause to think
With Apple Dictation you press a shortcut to start, press again to stop, and it stops on its own after 30 seconds of silence. Holding the Microphone key opens Siri instead.
With Speechy, hold Fn while you talk and let go when you are done, or tap Fn to talk hands-free. Take as long as you like to think: Speechy keeps listening until you let go. A small pill shows it is listening: pick a compact pill, a wide pill with your words, a Dynamic Island style bar or a one-line ticker.
Speechy's four recording styles: Compact, Wide, Dynamic Island and Ticker
Clean text, not a transcript
Apple Dictation adds punctuation and understands commands like "new line", but its settings have nothing for cleaning up the way people really talk. Speechy drops filler words, stutters and false starts on your Mac, with no AI model and nothing to set up. Every "Speechy types" box on this page is the app's own output for that sentence, taken from Speechy's test suite.
It also keeps up when you change your mind. Say "sorry", "I mean", "make it" or "or rather", and Speechy swaps the old time, date, amount or name for the new one. "Make it work" and "sorry I'm late" are left alone.
Lists you can say out loud
Apple Dictation has no list commands, so a list comes out as one long sentence. In Speechy, count your points out loud or say "bullet", and the list writes itself. In Mail, Notes, Pages and Word the dashes become bullets.
Your words, spelled your way
Apple Dictation has no custom vocabulary. That lives in Voice Control, which replaces Dictation when it is on. Speechy has a dictionary for names and jargon, replacements that fix a word every time (in every app, or only in one), and snippets you insert by voice: say "insert" and the snippet's name.
With a snippet called "my address" saved.
Speechy's dictionary: words, replacements and voice snippets
Already saved your words in Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, Monologue, Aqua Voice or Willow Voice? Speechy imports them.
Importing a dictionary from other dictation apps into Speechy
Several languages in one go
Apple Dictation listens for one language at a time. To switch, you click the language label or press the Globe key. In Speechy, pick your languages and turn on Multiple languages in one dictation. It works out the language again after every pause, so you can move between languages without touching anything.
With Hindi and English picked. Apple sends Hindi dictation to its servers; Speechy handles it on your Mac.
Speechy's language settings, with Multiple languages in one dictation
Only your voice gets typed
Apple's advice for a noisy room is a headset microphone. Speechy's Only My Voice learns your voice from one sentence read aloud, then leaves out words from the colleague behind you, the TV or a speakerphone, and keeps learning as you use it. Someone talking over you at the same moment can still slip through, but everyday background chatter does not.
Only My Voice: read one sentence aloud and Speechy learns your voice
A history of everything you said
Apple Dictation keeps nothing you can look back at. Speechy keeps a history on your Mac: search it with ⌘K, copy it all as Markdown or export it, and play back the audio. Deleted entries wait in Recently deleted until you empty it, and you choose how long to keep everything.
Undo a dictation, or throw one away
Pasted into the wrong window? Press ⌘⌥Z within five minutes and Speechy removes it and puts back anything it replaced. Changed your mind while talking? Press ⌘Esc to drop the take, so nothing is typed or saved.
Speechy's shortcuts: Fn to dictate, ⌘⌥Z to undo, ⌘Esc to discard
Always on your Mac
Apple Dictation runs on your Mac for most languages, but some still go to Apple's servers. Every speech model in Speechy runs on your Mac's chip, and you can choose between 15 of them. One of them is Apple's own speech model, so you can keep Apple's recognition and still get everything on this page.
Speechy's Models page, listing on-device voice models from NVIDIA, Apple and Whisper
Built for Claude Code and Codex
If you work with coding agents, Speechy puts Claude Code and Codex in your Mac's notch:
- Answer without switching windows. When an agent asks a question, wants permission to run a command or shows you a plan, it lands in the notch. Press 1 to allow or 2 to deny, J and K to move between them and E to clear one. Answered too fast? Esc takes it back within 2 seconds.
- Watch your plan limits. Your Claude and Codex usage sits beside the camera, read straight from the tools, with no keys to paste.
- Talk to an agent by name. Hold the key and say "api, run the migration again on staging", and it goes to that project's agent.
- Name files out loud. Turn on Reference coding files, and the file names you say become @file references in Claude Code for VS Code.
A Codex permission request in Speechy's notch, with Allow and Deny
Claude and Codex plan usage beside the camera
Everything else Speechy does
Numbers, money and times, written properly
Emails come out shaped like emails
Start with a greeting and end with a sign-off, and Speechy puts each on its own line. It skips this in chat apps, terminals and code editors.
It spells what is on your screen
With App Context on, the names in the window you are dictating into become spelling hints, so a file, a person or a product on screen comes out right. It stays on your Mac, password fields are always skipped, and you can leave out any app.
With DictationController.swift on screen.
Context you control: the names Speechy used from your screen, and the apps it leaves out
Paste, type or just copy, and send
Speechy pastes by default, then puts your clipboard back the way it was. It can type the words out instead, or leave them on the clipboard. Turn on Auto submit and it presses Enter (or ⌘Enter) for you, so a Slack message sends the moment you let go.
Speechy's output settings: paste method, clipboard and auto submit
Music pauses while you talk
Set Background audio to Pause media, and whatever is playing pauses while you dictate, then carries on when you are done.
Help when the mic is wrong
If Speechy hears nothing, it says so and plays your recording back, so a muted headset is obvious in a second. One click opens the microphone picker and a live input meter.
Stats that show the time you saved
Home shows your average speed, words dictated, dictations, days active and the time you saved compared with typing at 40 words a minute. The Stats page adds streaks and your golden hour, and the Speechy pass turns it into a card you can share.
A whole email from one sentence
Turn on Smart Polish with Apple Intelligence or the downloadable Qwen model, then start with "draft", "compose" or "write": "draft an email to Sarah saying the deck is delayed to Thursday". Speechy writes a greeting, a few short paragraphs and your sign-off, without inventing facts.
Light on memory
Speech models free their memory after 15 minutes idle, then reload as you start talking. With the default model that takes Speechy from about 1.2 GB to 60 MB.
Where Apple Dictation is better
- It is free and already on your Mac. No download, no account.
- It types right where you are. Words appear at the cursor as you speak, you can keep typing while dictating, and you can click a word to see alternatives.
- More languages. 34 languages, 22 of them on your Mac, plus emoji by name.
- A new model on newer Macs. macOS 27 brings a more advanced on-device model for English on M3 Macs and later with 12 GB of memory or more.
- Intel Macs. It works on older Intel Macs. Speechy needs Apple silicon.
The short version
For a quick sentence now and then, Apple Dictation is hard to beat. If you dictate all day and want clean text, lists, your own words, more than one language, a history, or a quiet result in a noisy room, Speechy is worth it. See pricing.
Apple Dictation details checked on 14 October 2026 in the Mac User Guide and on Apple's feature availability page.