Guides

Bear notes dictation on a Mac: voice to text, tags and checklists

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To dictate into Bear on a Mac, click into a note and press your Dictation shortcut or the Microphone key: Apple Dictation, built into macOS and free, works anywhere you can type, and a Bear note is text at a cursor. YapToText, the free app I built, types into Bear at the cursor too, runs Whisper on your Mac, and keeps listening until you tap the key again.

Bear is a Markdown notes app, and its tags start with #, so the one thing to get right is what a spoken # does. This page covers that, plus headings, checklists and quick notes. I built YapToText because my hands make typing difficult, and I dictate every day, but I have not tested it in Bear, so where something depends on Bear's behavior, I point to Bear's own help. If something will not start, the fixes for dictation not working in Bear are further down.

Download YapToText on the Mac App StoreDownload for free. No account, nothing locked, macOS 14 or later on Apple silicon. Source on GitHub.

On this page: 11 sections
  1. Steps
  2. Use Apple Dictation in a Bear note
    1. Step 1: Turn Dictation on once
    2. Step 2: Dictate into the note
  3. Dictate into Bear with YapToText
    1. Step 1: Click where the words go
    2. Step 2: Tap Right Command and talk
    3. Step 3: Tap it again
  4. Tags by voice: what a spoken # does in Bear
    1. Multi-word and nested tags: make a snippet
  5. Headings, bold and italics in a Bear note
    1. Ask for structure instead
  6. Checklists: dictate the items, then make them todos
    1. Step 1: Dictate the list
    2. Step 2: Make them todos
  7. Quick notes and recordings
  8. If dictation is not working in Bear
    1. If YapToText's words do not land in Bear
  9. What each one cannot do
  10. The short version
  11. Questions

Steps

  1. Open Bear and click into the note where you want the words.
  2. Tap Right Command and say the note, pausing as long as you need.
  3. For a tag, say insert hashtag followed by the tag word.
  4. Tap Right Command again, and the words land at the cursor.
  5. For a checklist, end each item with new line, then press Command T on each line in Bear.

Use Apple Dictation in a Bear note

Apple Dictation is the free option already on your Mac, and Apple says it works anywhere you can type, so a Bear note works like any other text field. Click into the note, then press your Dictation shortcut.

Step 1: Turn Dictation on once

  • You: Choose Apple menu, System Settings, then click Keyboard in the sidebar; you may need to scroll down. Go to Dictation, turn it on, and click Enable.
  • macOS: May ask whether to share audio recordings to improve Siri and Dictation. Not Now is a fine answer.
  • Check: Dictation stays on. Note the keys in the Shortcut pop-up menu, because they are how you start it in Bear.

Step 2: Dictate into the note

  • You: Click into the note where the words go. Press the Microphone key if your keyboard has one, or your Dictation shortcut.
  • macOS: Highlights the cursor and makes it pulse, or plays a tone, when it is ready.
  • Check: Words appear as you speak. Say "new line" or "new paragraph" for breaks, and press Esc, the Microphone key or the shortcut when you are done.

Dictation stops by itself after 30 seconds without speech, so a long pause ends a note mid-thought; the 30-second limit page explains why. The text below Dictation in Keyboard settings says whether your voice is processed on your Mac or sent to Siri servers.

Bear's own voice feature lives on the wrist. Its FAQ says Bear for Apple Watch has a New Note button: tap it, dictate, and Bear transcribes your words and saves them as a new note, which shows up pinned in the note list on your iPhone. That is handy for a thought on a walk; at the Mac, dictation does the job.

Dictate into Bear with YapToText

YapToText is the free Mac app I built for dictating into every app. It runs Whisper on your Mac, with no account, and types at the cursor like a keyboard. It needs an Apple silicon Mac with macOS 14 or later, and it is free on the Mac App Store. Click into the note, tap, talk, tap, and the words land at the cursor.

Step 1: Click where the words go

  • You: Click into the note, in the editor, where the words should go.
  • YapToText: Nothing yet. It types into the app in front, never into its own window.
  • Check: The cursor is blinking in the note, not in the note list or the search field.

Step 2: Tap Right Command and talk

  • You: Tap Right Command once and say what you want in the note.
  • YapToText: Opens the floating panel with your voice as a wave and your words as they form.
  • Check: The wave moves when you speak. If it stays flat, the app is not hearing your microphone yet.

Step 3: Tap it again

  • You: Tap Right Command again.
  • YapToText: Finishes the transcript on your Mac, pastes it at the cursor and puts back whatever you had copied before.
  • Check: The words are in the note, and the menu bar capybara's speech bubble flashes green when they land. If they went to the clipboard instead, Accessibility is not on yet.
App Store poster headed Yap it. Bam. It's typed. over the YapToText Home window and the three floating panel layouts.
Figure 1. Tap, talk, tap: the panel shows your words while you speak, and they land at the cursor in your Bear note.

I have not tested YapToText in Bear; it types into Bear the way it types into any app with a text cursor. What shapes the words when they land:

  • No lean for Bear. Auto mode, on by default, leans only for the mail, chat and code apps it names, and notes apps get no lean. Bear is on none of its lists, so the words decide: ordinary prose gets a careful pass that fixes what was misheard and rewrites nothing, a short or casual take stays exactly as spoken, and a take shaped like a letter still becomes an email.
  • No list unless you ask. Auto never turns speech into a list or a headed note on its own.
  • No clock. There is no silence timeout by default, so a pause to think does not end the note.
  • Sentences that join up. Intelligent Insert reads the words around the cursor first, so a dictation dropped mid-sentence starts lowercase and gets one space where words would collide.

The first dictation guide covers the panel and the keys that work while you talk.

Tags by voice: what a spoken # does in Bear

Bear's FAQ on tags says a tag is a word combined with a pound sign, like #ideas or #groceries, and that tags can go anywhere in a note, even in headings and paragraphs. A tag of several words is wrapped in pound signs at both ends, like #meeting notes#, and a nested tag separates levels with a slash, like #recipes/italian. In YapToText, insert hashtag puts a # glued to the next word, and in Bear that shape is a tag.

Say: Anywhere in a note, with Require the word insert before a command on, which is the default.

insert hashtag groceries

What happens: YapToText types #groceries, because the number sign glues to the next word. By Bear's rule, that is the tag #groceries. I have not tested it in Bear, so check the tag appears in Bear's sidebar.

What else to know before you tag by voice:

  • The names. Hashtag, hash sign, pound sign and number sign all type #, but said bare, the two-word names follow the clause rule, so pound sign followed by a lowercase word stays as words. Insert hashtag is the one to use for a tag. Say sterling sign for £.
  • Without insert. With the insert switch on, hashtag said alone is a one-word name, so it is typed as the word, not the symbol.
  • What Whisper wrote. A command fires only when Whisper writes its exact words. If a # arrives some other way, History's Show pipeline details shows what Whisper heard, and Bear reads whatever # lands by its own rules.
  • The cleanup pass. Spoken marks are settled before AI cleanup, but I have not tested whether the cleanup model always leaves a tag alone. For a take with tags in it, press 2 for Raw Transcription, where no AI model touches the text and spoken commands still work.

Multi-word and nested tags: make a snippet

A multi-word tag needs a closing #, and a nested one needs a slash in the middle, and how a spoken closing mark or slash would sit against the words is not something I will promise. A snippet is the clean way: it types exactly the text you give it, and snippets go in after any AI cleanup, so a rewrite cannot drop or move them.

  • You: On the Commands page, open the Snippets tab and press the Add button under the list. Type a phrase such as meeting tag under Say this, and #meeting notes# under Inserts.
  • YapToText: Saves it as you type.
  • Check: Dictate insert meeting tag at the end of a note, and the tag text lands. Check the spacing around it the first time.
YapToText's Commands page: Enable voice commands on, Require the word insert before a command on, and the Snippets tab.
Figure 2. Snippets live on the Commands page; one for each tag you use often turns a spoken phrase into an exact Bear tag.

The spoken punctuation guide lists every name, and the rest of the Commands page.

Headings, bold and italics in a Bear note

Bear's Markdown help says a heading starts a line with a pound sign and a space, with up to six for smaller headings; bold sits between two asterisks, italics between underscores, and the shortcuts are Command B and Command I. In Bear, a # glued to a word is a tag and a # followed by a space is a heading, so YapToText's spoken hash, which glues to the next word, has the shape of a tag.

That is why I would not dictate headings with insert hashtag in Bear. Dictate the heading as plain words on its own line, then put the cursor at the start and type the pound sign and a space. For bold and italics, dictate the words, select them and press Command B or Command I.

Ask for structure instead

Note mode writes short headings and bullets, pulls action items into a list, and adds nothing you did not say. While you talk, press Note's number key, 4 out of the box, or end the take with as a note. Note mode is a small model following instructions, and I have not checked that it writes headings as Markdown marks every time. If you want them that way, make a mode that says so: on the Modes page, right-click Note, choose Duplicate, and write the instructions in the AI cleanup card.

Mode instructions: An example for Bear notes.

Turn my dictation into a short Markdown note. Start each heading with ## and a space, and each bullet with a hyphen and a space. Keep my words and my meaning. Do not add anything I did not say.

What happens: The cleanup model rewrites each dictation in that mode toward this, on your Mac. Type a sample in the Try it out card and press Preview with AI before you rely on it.

The modes guide covers writing instructions, and the Obsidian guide does the same for another Markdown notes app.

Checklists: dictate the items, then make them todos

Bear's FAQ on lists and todos says a todo is a hyphen and a space, then square brackets with a space inside, then a space; the style bar on Mac and the shortcut Command T make one too. Unordered list items start with an asterisk, a hyphen or a plus sign and a space. Dictate the items one per line, then press Command T in Bear to turn them into todos.

Step 1: Dictate the list

  • You: Tap Right Command and say each item, ending each one with new line.
  • YapToText: Types each item on its own line; new line swallows the spaces on both sides of the break.
  • Check: One item per line.

Step 2: Make them todos

  • You: Put the cursor on an item and press Command T, or use the style bar.
  • Bear: Makes the line a todo, per its FAQ.
  • Check: A checkbox sits before the item.

Two voice-only routes, both with a caution:

  • A bulleted list. End the take with as a bullet list, and Auto writes what you said as a list. Whether the bullet comes out as a Markdown hyphen or another mark is the cleanup model's choice, so check it.
  • Action items. Note mode pulls action items into a list. A duplicated mode can be told to start each one with a hyphen, a space and square brackets with a space inside, but a small model may not do it every time, so preview it in Try it out first.

Quick notes and recordings

Most notes in Bear are short: a thought, a number, a line to come back to. For a quick note, open a new note and tap the key; for a thought already said elsewhere, bring it in.

  • A dated note. Say insert today's date, one of the five snippets that ship with YapToText, at the top of a journal entry.
  • Before Bear is open. On YapToText's Utility page, press Dictate in the Dictate card and talk; the text lands in the card's scratchpad instead of another app. Click into a Bear note, come back and press Insert, which types into the app you were last using, or press Copy.
  • A take you already made. Insert last, in the menu bar panel, types your most recent dictation into the app you were just using. The Paste recent dictation shortcut, unassigned until you set it in Settings, General, lists your last nine.
  • A recording. For a voice memo or a ramble from your phone, pick a mode in the Transcribe a file card on the Utility page, Note for a tidy note or Raw Transcription for every word, drop the file, then click Insert or Copy. YapToText has no iPhone version, so recordings are the phone route.

Utility scratchpad dictations and Utility file transcriptions are not saved to History, so insert or copy them before you close the card. The voice journaling guide builds a daily habit on the same pieces, and the Voice Memos guide covers recordings.

If dictation is not working in Bear

The first fix is where the cursor sits. Dictation types at the insertion point, so click into the note's text before you start. For Apple Dictation, climb this ladder, smallest step first:

  1. Click into the note. Click into the text of the note, not the note list or the search field.
  2. Turn Dictation on. In System Settings, Keyboard, make sure Dictation is on.
  3. Press the shortcut your Mac expects. The Shortcut pop-up menu under Dictation names the keys. Press and release the Microphone key; holding it calls Siri when Siri is on.
  4. Turn off Voice Control. When Voice Control is on, standard Dictation is not available, and you dictate through Voice Control instead.

If YapToText's words do not land in Bear

Another short ladder, smallest step first:

  1. If the words go to the clipboard. On YapToText's Home page, press Grant next to Accessibility and switch the app on in System Settings, Privacy & Security, Accessibility. Without it, every dictation is copied to the clipboard instead of typed. Press Command V and nothing is lost.
  2. If a tag comes out as a word. Put insert in front of hashtag while the insert switch is on.
  3. If a tag name keeps coming out wrong. Add it on the Dictionaries page, with what Whisper heard under Heard and your spelling under Replace with, or make it a snippet. The dictionaries guide shows how.
  4. If Bear beeps. Intelligent Insert reads the text around your cursor with a few invisible keystrokes, and some apps answer one with the alert sound. With Bear open, go to the Dictation page, choose Turn off in another app in the Delivery card and pick Bear, or lower Alert volume in System Settings, Sound.
  5. If pasting misbehaves. With Bear open, choose Add App Override under Per-app method in Settings, Advanced, pick Bear and keep Type character-by-character.
  6. If a take was wrong. Within 30 seconds, say scratch that as its own dictation to remove it, or replace, the wrong word, with, the right word.

The Mac dictation not working guide covers Apple's side in detail.

What each one cannot do

  • Apple Dictation. It stops after 30 seconds of silence, it is not available while Voice Control is on, and whether your voice leaves the Mac depends on what Keyboard settings says.
  • Bear for Apple Watch. Bear's FAQ describes a watch app for new notes, appended text and ticking off tasks; at the Mac you still need a dictation tool.
  • YapToText. It types text: it does not make or move notes, tick todos or link notes. Its spoken commands are punctuation, emoji and snippets, and its behavior in Bear, tags included, is untested. Note mode and Auto mode's formatting need a cleanup model, which the App Store build includes and the Homebrew build leaves for you to download. It needs an Apple silicon Mac with macOS 14 or later.

It gets the words and the tags in; Bear does the organizing.

The short version

  • Built in. Click into the note and press your Dictation shortcut, for pauses under 30 seconds.
  • On device. YapToText: tap Right Command, talk, tap again.
  • Tags. Say insert hashtag before the word, press 2 for Raw Transcription on a take with tags, and make snippets for multi-word or nested tags.
  • Headings and todos. Dictate the words, then add # and a space or press Command T.

A glued # is a tag in Bear, so say it on purpose and check the first few.

Notes in Apple's own app work a little differently, and the guide to dictation in Notes covers them. If something here does not match what you see in Bear, open an issue on GitHub. Every one gets read.

Download YapToText on the Mac App StoreDownload for free. No account, nothing locked, macOS 14 or later on Apple silicon. 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.

Sources

Questions

Can you dictate into Bear on a Mac?

Yes. Click into a note and use Apple Dictation, built into macOS, or a dictation app that types at your cursor, such as YapToText. Both put the words in the note you have open.

How do I add a tag in Bear by voice?

With YapToText, say insert hashtag and then the word, and it types the # glued to the word, which Bear's help says makes a tag. For multi-word or nested tags, make a snippet on the Commands page that types the exact tag.

Why did my dictated heading turn into a tag in Bear?

Bear's help says a heading is a # followed by a space at the start of a line, while a # glued to a word is a tag. Dictate the heading as words, then type the # and a space yourself.

Can I make a checklist in Bear by voice?

Dictate the items with new line after each, then press Command T on each line, which Bear's FAQ lists as the todo shortcut. A custom YapToText mode can try to write todo marks, but preview it first.

Does Bear have voice to text?

Bear's FAQ says Bear for Apple Watch can dictate a new note. On a Mac, use Apple Dictation or a dictation app such as YapToText, which type into any note.