Free dictation software for disabled people on a Mac

By Ryleigh Newman · Published July 15, 2026 · Updated October 9, 2026

YapToText is free dictation software for disabled people on a Mac: anything that presses one key starts it, or Voice Control can, and your words are typed at the cursor in any app without your voice leaving the Mac. I cannot type, and this is the setup I use every day. macOS Voice Control does the clicking and moving around. YapToText does the words.

It runs on an Apple silicon Mac with macOS 14 or later. It is free with no paid tier, because charging disabled people for the ability to type felt wrong to me. There is no account, and the source is public under the GPL, so every privacy claim can be checked. This page is the hub: how much your hands have to do, the settings that help, how to set it up with someone, and what I have not tested.

This app is completely free. You don't have to make an account. There are no subscriptions, no difficult downloads, and nothing is locked. Made for Apple silicon Macs. Source on GitHub.

This guide in other languages: العربية, Čeština, Dansk, Deutsch, Ελληνικά, Español, Suomi, Français, עברית, हिन्दी, Magyar, Bahasa Indonesia, Italiano, 日本語, 한국어, Norsk, Nederlands, Polski, Português, Română, Русский, Slovenčina, Svenska, ไทย, Türkçe, Українська, Tiếng Việt, 简体中文, 繁體中文

On this page: 11 sections

1. Start from how much your hands can do
2. Settings that help
3. Set it up together
   1. Step 1: Install it and allow the microphone
   2. Step 2: Turn on Accessibility
   3. Step 3: Let them choose the key
   4. Step 4: Do one dictation into a note
4. Built to work alongside VoiceOver and Voice Control
5. Write by voice without a pointer
6. Fix and reshape what you said
7. If the words land somewhere else
8. What I have not tested
9. Find the page for your situation
10. The short version
11. Questions

Start from how much your hands can do

The trigger decides whether dictation works for your hands, so start there. Nothing in a dictation needs two keys at once. The ladder runs from the least effort to the most. Stop at the first rung your hands can manage:

1. No hands at all. Voice Control, built into macOS, can open the menu bar capybara's panel and click its Start Dictation button, which does the same job as the dictation key. That is how the pieces fit, not a tested result. The hands free typing guide has the full setup, step by step.
2. One tap. Tap Right Command, talk, and tap it again. Tap to start / stop is the default, and the key can be any key you can reach. Turn on Auto-stop after silence and the second tap becomes optional: stop talking, and the dictation ends.
3. One hold. Some hands hold a key more easily than they land on it twice. Choose Hold to talk, and recording runs while the key is down and ends when you let go.
4. One motion somewhere else. A switch, a foot pedal or a button on a wheelchair can be the trigger if the Mac sees it as one key press, because any single key can be the dictation key. I have not tested every switch interface, so that is how the trigger works, not a guarantee. The one-key dictation guide has a ten-second test for your device.

Settings that help

Each need below maps to one setting, and every one is free. The defaults already lean toward tired hands: tapping instead of holding, and nothing lost to a stray Esc.

• Hands that cannot hold a key. Tap to start / stop is the default for the dictation key and for the Quick Edit key. I moved the Quick Edit key from holding to tapping because tapping is easier on hands that cannot hold a key down.
• Hands that shake. Turn on Require pressing Escape twice to cancel, on the Dictation page in the Keys card, and a cancel needs a second press within 0.6 seconds. Even a canceled dictation is saved to History, marked as canceled, unless you turn off Keep canceled dictations in Settings, Advanced, History & audio.
• Hands that tire. Auto-stop after silence, in the Recording card of the Dictation page, ends a dictation after 0.5 to 5 seconds of quiet, so one press is enough. It is off by default, because a long pause to think ends the dictation too.
• A quiet voice. Auto-amplify quiet speech is on by default and measures your voice against the room. When the Mac's input volume is low, the Dictation page says so and offers to raise it. I dictate quietly, often next to a running 3D printer, so this part got a lot of my attention.
• Wanting a look before it lands. Review before inserting, in Settings, Advanced, Text output, holds the text in a small editor with Insert and Discard buttons. It is off by default.
• A panel that pulls the eye. Pick the Mini layout, just the waveform, in the Pop-up card, or turn off Show the floating recording panel. Dictation works the same either way, and the floating panel page shows all three layouts.
• Eyes that cannot follow the panel. VoiceOver announces every step of a dictation, and Play start and stop sounds, in Settings, General, adds a sound at each end. Sounds are off by default.
• Messages that should send themselves. After a dictation lands, in Settings, Advanced, Text output, presses Return or Command Return in the apps you pick, so a dictated message goes out with no extra press.

Set it up together

If you are setting this up for someone, set it up with them, not for them. They should choose the key, because their hand is the one that presses it. Four steps, each with something to check:

Step 1: Install it and allow the microphone

• You: Install YapToText from the Mac App Store with the Apple ID already on the Mac, open it, and press Continue next to Microphone on the welcome screens. After setup, the same button sits in the Get set up card on the Home page.
• macOS: Asks once for the microphone.
• Check: Microphone shows as granted.

Step 2: Turn on Accessibility

• You: Press Continue next to Accessibility on the welcome screens, or Grant in the Get set up card on the Home page, then switch YapToText on in the list that opens.
• macOS: Sends you to System Settings, Privacy & Security, Accessibility. An app cannot switch this on for itself. With Voice Control on, the switch can be clicked by voice, by name or with Show numbers.
• Check: Accessibility shows as Granted on the welcome screen, and on the Home page the Get set up card goes away once both permissions are on. If the switch will not stay on, press Show in Finder on the Home page, drag the app into the list, and press Recheck.

Step 3: Let them choose the key

• You: On the Dictation page, in the Keys card, click the key field. When it reads Tap a key, have them press the key their hand finds most easily, then choose Tap to start / stop or Hold to talk beside it.
• YapToText: Makes that key the trigger. A letter or an F-key stops typing while it is the dictation key.
• Check: The field shows the new key, with no red conflict warning.

Step 4: Do one dictation into a note

• You: Click into a new note, press the key, say a sentence, and press it again.
• YapToText: Shows the voice as a wave in the floating panel and turns the menu bar capybara's speech bubble red, which is as close as a rodent gets to saying it is listening. Then it types the words at the cursor.
• Check: The sentence is in the note. If it landed on the clipboard instead, Step 2 did not stick.

Built to work alongside VoiceOver and Voice Control

The floating panel is visual, so the app also speaks. With VoiceOver on, every step of a dictation is announced: Listening, Transcribing, Cleaning up, any error, and the moment the words land or the dictation is canceled, even when no app window is in front. The panel's pause, stop and insert, and cancel are accessibility actions, and the menu bar panel's buttons carry labels, so VoiceOver and Voice Control can reach them without a pointer.

The two tools split the work. Voice Control clicks, scrolls and opens apps. YapToText writes. Built to work alongside them describes the code, not a test result. The VoiceOver and Voice Control test pass has not been run yet. If something on your setup does not behave the way this page says, I would rather hear that than anything else.

Write by voice without a pointer

Tap the key, talk, and tap again: the words are typed at the cursor in whatever app is in front, as if you had typed them. While a dictation runs, three more keys work. They are captured only during a dictation, so the rest of the time they type as usual:

• Space. It pauses and resumes.
• Esc. It cancels at once, so nothing is typed. The words still go to History, marked as canceled.
• 1 to 9. These keys pick a mode. With Auto mode on, which is the default, Auto is 1 and a pick lasts for this one dictation.

Punctuation comes out of ordinary speech, and two-word names work at the end of a clause: say question mark or new paragraph and you get the mark or the break. Auto mode shapes each dictation by itself, so a dictation that opens with a greeting and closes with a sign-off comes out as an email, and a quick chat message stays as spoken. You talk the way you talk, and the app does the formatting. The first dictation guide walks through one dictation, and the Auto mode page says what it reads and what it leaves alone.

Apple's built-in Dictation is free and fine for short bursts. The guide to dictation on a Mac shows how to turn it on, and the voice to text guide covers what it takes for dictation to replace the keyboard.

Fix and reshape what you said

A wrong word does not have to send you back to the keyboard. Right after a dictation lands, make your next dictation one of these phrases, within 30 seconds, and it edits instead of typing:

• Scratch that. It takes back the dictation you just made.
• Replace X with Y. It swaps one word or phrase in it, as in replace Tuesday with Thursday.

Only the exact whole phrase counts, and it needs Insert text automatically, which is on by default. For anything bigger there is Quick Edit: select the text, tap Right Option, say the change, such as make this shorter or fix the grammar, and tap again. The rewrite replaces the selection in place. Retyping is the one thing a tired hand should not have to do. If the recognizer keeps missing a name, fix it the same way twice and the app offers to remember it. The Quick Edit page lists what you can say, and the Dictionaries page explains how a remembered word works.

If the words land somewhere else

When a dictation does not appear where you expected, start at the top of this list:

1. Click into the app first. YapToText never types into its own window, so a dictation started with YapToText in front goes to the clipboard. Press Command V to paste it.
2. Turn on Accessibility. Without it, every dictation is copied to the clipboard instead of typed. The Get set up card on the Home page shows whether it is on.
3. Silence the beep. Intelligent Insert reads the words around your cursor with a few invisible keystrokes, and some apps refuse one, so macOS plays its alert sound. Turn Alert volume all the way down in System Settings, Sound, which quiets only alert beeps, or turn Intelligent Insert off for that one app on the Dictation page.
4. Find it in History. By default History keeps your last 500 dictations for 30 days, each with what was heard, what was delivered and which app it went to, and any entry can be copied or inserted again.

Nothing you said is lost. History has it. The troubleshooting guide goes further, the Intelligent Insert page explains the beep, and the History page covers what is kept and for how long.

What I have not tested

• No accessibility test pass yet. The VoiceOver, Voice Control, pedal and switch test pass has not been run, so this page names no tested hardware. Anything that presses one key can be the trigger, and I have not tested every switch interface.
• Apple silicon only. It needs an Apple silicon Mac with macOS 14 or later. Nothing is claimed for Intel Macs.
• A general-purpose speech model. Whisper Large v3 Turbo is used as published, not tuned for speech that is hard to understand. The settings by condition page has a five-minute test for that.
• An English interface. The app's own words are in English. It hears 29 languages, plus auto-detect.
• The Homebrew build. It ships without models, so it cannot dictate until you download a speech model. The App Store build has both models inside, and the offline dictation guide explains what that means with no internet.

Find the page for your situation

• No hands at all. Hands free typing on a Mac pairs Voice Control for clicking with YapToText for every word.
• Voice Control or Dictation. Mac Dictation vs Voice Control explains what each one does and why only one runs at a time.
• One key, a switch or a pedal. Dictating with one key ranks every trigger by how much a hand has to do.
• A condition by name. Settings for tremor, Parkinson's, MS, ALS and more are on one page, with no promises and a five-minute test.
• Typing that hurts. Dictation for carpal tunnel explains why tapping beats holding a key.
• Bluetooth hearing aids. Dictating with hearing aids keeps the good microphone and the good sound.
• An older parent. Setting it up for a parent is its own page, down to the sticky note.
• Spelling that gets in the way. Speech to text for dyslexia covers saying words instead of spelling them, and hearing them read back.
• Thoughts that move faster than typing. Dictation for ADHD covers getting a thought down with one key and sorting it out later.
• Handwriting and typing that get in the way of ideas. Speech to text for dysgraphia covers getting ideas down by voice and shaping them afterward.
• Blind or low vision. Dictation with VoiceOver covers what the app announces, the keys, and what has not been tested.
• Repetitive strain. Dictation for RSI covers typing less and holding nothing down.
• Dragon habits. The Dragon for Mac alternative page maps each one to its equivalent here.

For Apple's own features, step by step, with the dictation key on a switch, a controller or a screen corner: Mac accessibility features, Switch Control, head pointer, the Accessibility Keyboard and Dwell, a Mac without a mouse, one-handed typing, and adaptive controllers.

The short version

• Start with one key. Tap to start, tap to stop, and any key you can reach can be the one.
• Let Voice Control do the clicking. YapToText does the words, and the two are built to sit side by side.
• Fix by voice. Scratch that, replace X with Y, and Quick Edit keep your hands off the keys.

It is free for everyone, and nothing you say leaves your Mac. If something here does not work with your body or your setup, open an issue on GitHub. Every one gets read.

This app is completely free. You don't have to make an account. There are no subscriptions, no difficult downloads, and nothing is locked. Made for Apple silicon Macs. Source on GitHub.

About the author. Ryleigh Newman is a developer whose hands make typing difficult and who dictates every day with YapToText, the app this site describes. Facts about other apps come from their own sites, with the date they were read. More about the project.

Related

• Live Captions on a Mac: real-time captions for calls, videos and the room around you
• VoiceOver on a Mac: how to turn it on or off, and what to do with it
• How people with quadriplegia use a Mac, by what moves
• Write on a Mac with an Xbox Adaptive Controller or a PlayStation Access Controller
• Head pointer on a Mac: move the pointer with your head, and write without a hand
• Switch Control on a Mac: set up your switches, then write by voice
• Mac accessibility features for hands and mobility, and how to write with each one
• Dictate on a Mac with one key, a switch, or a pedal
• Dictation for tremor, Parkinson's, MS and ALS: what to set first
• Dictation for carpal tunnel on a Mac, with nothing to hold down

Sources

• https://support.apple.com/guide/voiceover/turn-voiceover-on-or-off-vo2682/mac (checked 2026-10-03)
• https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-voice-control-commands-mh40719/mac (checked 2026-10-03)
• https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-dictation-mh40584/mac (checked 2026-10-03)

Questions