Dictate into any Mac app with the Option-Space shortcut

You can dictate into any Mac app with one shortcut: press it, talk, press it again, and the words appear where your cursor is. This guide covers how to use it well, the settings worth changing, and the rewrite chips that turn a rambling thought into a clean message. It all runs on your Mac, in every app, offline.

Which Mac apps you can dictate into

The text goes wherever the cursor is, so put it there first.

1. Click into the field you want to fill: the body of an email, a Slack message, a document, a chat prompt, a form.
2. Press Option-Space. The floating voice bar appears at the bottom of the screen and reads Listening… tap to stop.
3. Speak naturally. Say punctuation if you like, or let ThinkScribe add it.
4. Press Option-Space again, or click the bar. The status changes to Processing…, then the text is inserted.

The bar and the menu bar icon both show when the microphone is live, so you always know whether it is listening.

How to cancel a dictation before it inserts

If you change your mind mid-sentence, press Escape while the bar is listening. The dictation is discarded and nothing is inserted. This is on by default and can be changed under Settings > Voice Typing > Press Escape to Cancel.

Change the shortcut

1. Open Settings from the sidebar and choose the Voice Typing tab.
2. Under Global Hotkey, click Change, then press the combination you want. ThinkScribe warns you if it clashes with a well-known system shortcut.
3. A single function key also works. Click Change, then tap F5, for example, and you have a one-key dictation button.

The Transcription menu in the menu bar shows the current shortcut next to Start Voice Typing, so you can always check what it is set to.

Floating bar or menu bar icon

The Indicator picker under Settings > Voice Typing offers two styles:

• Floating Bar: a small draggable capsule that stays on top of every app and snaps to the screen edge. Click it to stop, right-click it for the engine, statistics and settings.
• Menu Bar Icon: nothing on screen except the status item at the top, which pulses while listening.

Either way the shortcut works the same. The Floating microphone button toggle in the welcome tour is the same setting.

Pick the engine for dictation

Voice typing has its own engine choice, separate from the one used for meeting transcription, because the trade-offs differ when you want a sentence back in under a second:

• Apple Speech is built in, needs no download and is instant. It is the default until Parakeet is installed.
• Parakeet is the recommended engine once downloaded: fast, accurate and covers 25 languages.
• Whisper is the choice for Chinese, Japanese, Korean and languages the other two do not cover.

Set it under Settings > Voice Typing > Voice Typing Engine, or right-click the floating bar and use the Engine submenu.

Rewrite what you said

After a dictation is inserted, the floating bar briefly offers three chips:

• Professional rewrites the text in a formal tone, good for email.
• Shorten cuts it down while keeping the point.
• AI Prompt turns a spoken description into a clear instruction for ChatGPT, Claude or any other assistant.

Click one and the inserted text is replaced. These rewrites use the on-device ThinkScribe AI model; nothing is sent anywhere. Separately, the Clean Text toggle under Text Cleanup removes filler words and fixes punctuation before every insertion.

Insert directly or paste

By default ThinkScribe copies the dictation to the clipboard and pastes it for you, which works in every app without extra permissions. If you grant Accessibility permission under Settings > Permissions, you can switch Text Input Method to Direct insertion, which types at the cursor without touching the clipboard. Both are fine; direct insertion is nicer if you paste things often and do not want your clipboard replaced.

Fix names and jargon

If a colleague's surname or a product name keeps coming out wrong, add it once under Settings > Vocabulary, or select the wrong word in any transcript and choose Teach Correct Word…. From then on the recognizer is biased toward it. The custom vocabulary guide explains how that works and its limits.

Keep dictation ready so the first word is not lost

• ThinkScribe keeps voice typing available from the menu bar even with the main window closed.
• Turn on Launch at Login under Settings > Recording so the shortcut works from the moment you sign in.
• The Usage Stats block at the bottom of the Voice Typing tab shows words dictated today, in total, and your streak.

Frequently asked questions

Does voice typing work offline?

Yes. Apple Speech, Parakeet and Whisper all run on your Mac, and so does the rewrite model. You can dictate with Wi-Fi turned off.

How do I dictate into Slack or Mail on a Mac?

Click into the message field first so the cursor is blinking in it, press Option-Space, say the message, then press Option-Space again. The text lands where the cursor is. The same gesture works in Messages, Notion, Google Docs in a browser, Xcode and Terminal, because anywhere you can paste text is somewhere you can dictate.

Can I hold a key instead of pressing it twice?

The shipping shortcut is press-to-start, press-to-stop. A single function key makes that a one-tap gesture, and Escape cancels. If you dictate long passages, the toggle style means you can pause to think without the microphone closing on you.

Which languages can I dictate in?

Any language supported by the engine you pick. Parakeet covers 25 European languages; Whisper adds Chinese, Japanese, Korean and many more; Apple Speech follows the languages installed on your Mac. Language is detected automatically, or set a default under Settings > Transcription.