The bar for dictation apps changed when Apple Silicon arrived. On-device recognition is now fast enough to be genuinely useful — which means the best app is no longer the one with the best server. It's the one that gets out of the way fastest.
The things that matter in daily use are simpler than most reviews suggest. Speed — not benchmark speed, but the delay you feel between releasing the key and seeing the text. Accuracy on your accent and vocabulary. Punctuation that doesn't need correcting. And the ability to work without an internet connection, because the best moment to dictate is often not the moment you have great Wi-Fi.
Cloud dictation services — including older versions of Apple's built-in dictation — send audio to a server and wait for a response. The result depends on your connection: fast internet means acceptable speed, slow internet means frustrating delays, no internet means it doesn't work.
On Apple Silicon, the Neural Engine can run the Whisper recognition model entirely on-device, in real time. A typical sentence is ready in about a third of a second. That speed doesn't change based on where you are or what your connection is doing.
The best dictation apps use a held key — press to start, release to finish — rather than a toggle or a button in a separate window. A held key feels like a walkie-talkie: natural, low-friction, and impossible to leave running by accident. It also means the app disappears from your workflow entirely when you're not using it.
Dictami is built specifically for Apple Silicon. Hold the right Command key, speak, release — punctuated text appears in whatever app your cursor is in, in about half a second. The model runs on your Mac, nothing is uploaded, and it works with no internet connection.
30 languages are supported at full speed: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and more. No account required. One license key, checked once, never again.
macOS 14 Sonoma or later on an Apple Silicon Mac — any M1, M2, M3, or M4 chip. Intel Macs aren't supported. The recognition model downloads once from Settings and never needs updating manually.
7-day trial inside the app. No card, no account.
Download Dictami