Blog
On writing with your mouth on a Mac
Where dictation breaks, why mixed Chinese–English is hard, what leaves your Mac and what never does, and how to turn a ramble into an instruction an AI agent can follow.
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Voice to Text on Mac Without a Subscription: Three Routes
What a Mac dictation subscription actually pays for, and three ways to skip it: a free tier with no account or card, your own API key, or local Ollama.
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Mac fn Key Opens Emoji Instead of Dictation? Who Owns It
Emoji picker, input-source switch, Apple Dictation, WeChat IME and dictation apps all want the Mac fn key. Find out which one has it and how to change that.
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Fully Local Mac Dictation with Ollama: Setup and Trade-offs
How to run Mac dictation with no cloud at all: Apple on-device recognition plus Ollama cleanup on localhost. Setup steps, a Wi-Fi-off test, what you give up.
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Mac Dictation Shows Nothing? Check the Language Download
The orb moves but no text lands. On macOS 14–15, on-device dictation needs a downloaded language and has no cloud fallback. The fix for each macOS version.
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Switching Dictation Apps on a Mac: The Setup Checklist
Switching from Wispr Flow, superwhisper or Typeless? Save your word list, pick a free trigger key, grant two permissions, run five day-one tests.
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How to Add Words to Mac Dictation That It Gets Wrong
macOS Dictation has no word list; Voice Control's Vocabulary is a different feature. What Apple offers, its limits, and how to fix the word in the text instead.
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Claude Code /voice vs a Dictation App: What the Docs Say
Claude Code's /voice streams audio to Anthropic and needs a Claude.ai login; a system-wide Mac dictation app keeps recognition local. Where each one stops.
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Claude Code Voice: Chinese Not Supported? Dictate 中英 Anyway
Claude Code's /voice doc lists 20 dictation languages and no Chinese (Sep 2026). How to dictate mixed Chinese-English prompts into Claude Code on a Mac anyway.
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Dictation Cleanup Changed My Meaning: What to Check
Where dictation apps invent words, what filler removal should and shouldn't touch, unedited samples at three strengths, and where the raw transcript lives.
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Dictation Not Working in iTerm2? Check Secure Keyboard Entry
Dictation key dead only in Terminal or iTerm2? Secure Keyboard Entry is blocking it. How to find which app holds it, and what to do instead of turning it off.
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Traditional Chinese Output in Mac Dictation, Not Simplified
You speak Mandarin, the Mac writes Simplified. Why an on-device recognizer does that, and how a Traditional script lock fixes it whenever cleanup runs.
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Local vs Cloud Dictation App: Two Questions, Not One
Local vs cloud is two questions: where does audio go, and what does cleanup receive? An airplane-mode test, seven questions for any vendor, ListenIn's answers.