The fastest voice-to-text dictation app for Mac. Hold a key, speak, and your words appear right where you're typing.
Hold to Talk is a Mac app.
Save this for later and open it on your Mac.
How it works
Press and hold the Fn (Globe) key on your Mac. Recording starts instantly.
Talk at your normal pace. Handles accents, jargon, and fast speech with ease.
Release the key and transcribed text is pasted right where your cursor sits.
Features
~300ms speech recognition. You release the key and the text is already there.
Text appears right where you're typing. No copying, no switching windows. Just speak and it's there.
Teach it your jargon, names, and technical terms. Your custom word list guides transcription for better accuracy.
Lives in your menu bar. Always one key press away, never in the way. No dock icon, no windows to manage.
Any text field in any app. Slack, VS Code, your browser, email, notes — if you can type there, you can speak there.
Privacy & Permissions
Used only to capture your speech while the hotkey is held. No background listening.
Used only to paste the returned transcript into the active app's text field. Nothing else.
Audio is sent over HTTPS, transcribed, and immediately discarded. Recent transcripts may be stored locally on your Mac only — never uploaded, never logged.
Direct DMG from holdtotalk.com. No bundled software, browser extensions, or download helpers. Full details on Privacy and Download.
Free dictation for Mac, with a Pro plan when you need more than the weekly free tier.
FAQ
Press and hold the Fn key (or a custom hotkey), speak naturally, and release. Your speech is transcribed in approximately 300 milliseconds and pasted directly where your cursor is — in any app on your Mac.
Hold to Talk asks for Microphone access to capture speech and Accessibility access so it can paste the transcript into the active app. It does not install browser extensions or bundled helper software.
Hold to Talk includes a free plan. If you use it heavily, you can upgrade to Pro for more transcription time.
No. Audio is sent over HTTPS to the transcription server, converted to text, and immediately discarded server-side — nothing is stored or logged on our servers. Recent transcript text may be kept locally on your Mac only, and never leaves your device.
macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. It runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.
Approximately 300 milliseconds. You release the key and the text is already there. Significantly faster than Apple's built-in Dictation.
Hold to Talk is faster (~300ms vs seconds), uses a hold-to-record model instead of toggling dictation on and off, supports custom vocabulary for technical jargon and names, and works reliably in every app including code editors and terminals.
Yes. Hold to Talk works in any text field on your Mac — Slack, VS Code, your browser, email, notes, terminals, and more. If you can type there, you can speak there.