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Dictate into any app: hold or hands-free
Click where the text should go, hold 🌐, talk, and let go: the text lands where your cursor is. For longer stretches, double-tap 🌐 and talk hands-free, then tap 🌐 once (or press ✓ on the pill) to finish. Dictation is English only and needs an internet connection.
Hold to talk
Put your cursor where the text should go
Any app works: a message, an email, a document, a form field, a terminal.
Hold 🌐 and talk
A small pill appears at the bottom of your screen with bars that move while SwitchDesk hears you. It never shows your words while you talk.
Let go
The pill settles for a moment, then the cleaned-up text is pasted at your cursor.
Talk hands-free
Double-tap 🌐 (or press ⌘⇧Space) and let go of the keyboard. Settings calls this “free-speak”. The pill gets two buttons:
- ✓ (“Commit (insert)”) pastes what you said. A single tap of 🌐, or ⌘⇧Space again, does the same.
- ✕ (“Cancel (discard)”) throws it away. esc does too.
Line breaks, lists and corrections
Say these while you dictate. They come from the “Voice commands” card in Settings then Dictation:
| Say | What happens |
|---|---|
| new line · new paragraph | Inserts line breaks in the text you dictate. |
| new bullet <item> | Bulleted list; “first… second… third…” makes a numbered list. |
| scratch that · never mind | Drops what you just said and keeps only the restated version. |
Descriptions are the app’s own, from Settings then Dictation.
Find something you dictated
Click the SwitchDesk icon in the menu bar. Under “Recent Dictations”, click a row to copy the whole dictation again, even if it never made it into the app you meant.