Guides

Dictation in Keynote on a Mac: slide text and presenter notes by voice

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To dictate in Keynote on a Mac, click into a text box on the slide or into the presenter notes, choose Edit, Start Dictation, and start speaking when the microphone appears. That is Apple Dictation, free and built into macOS, and Apple's Keynote guide says to speak punctuation by name, such as comma or apostrophe.

Apple Dictation stops by itself after 30 seconds without speech. YapToText, the free app I built, types at the Keynote cursor too, keeps listening until you tap the key again, and keeps your voice on your Mac. It can also turn a spoken ramble into bullet-style lines with Note mode, and tighten a wordy line with Quick Edit. I built it because my hands make typing difficult, and I dictate with it every day. If dictation is the part that broke, the fixes for dictation not working in Keynote 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 from the Edit menu
    1. Step 1: Turn Dictation on once
    2. Step 2: Dictate into the slide or the notes
    3. Step 3: Stop when you are done
  3. Dictate presenter notes
    1. Step 1: Show the notes
    2. Step 2: Click into the notes and dictate
  4. Use YapToText in Keynote, free and on device
    1. Step 1: Click where the words go
    2. Step 2: Tap Right Command and talk
    3. Step 3: Tap it again
  5. Turn speech into bullet-style slide text
  6. Tighten a line with Quick Edit
  7. Compare where your voice goes
  8. If dictation is not working in Keynote
    1. If YapToText's words do not land in Keynote
  9. What each one cannot do
  10. The short version
  11. Questions

Steps

  1. Open your presentation in Keynote and place the insertion point in a text box or the presenter notes, or select the text you want to replace.
  2. Choose Edit, Start Dictation from the menu bar.
  3. If you have not used dictation before, follow the setup instructions that appear.
  4. When the microphone appears, start speaking, and say punctuation by name, such as comma.
  5. Click Done below the microphone, or press Esc, when you are finished.

Use Apple Dictation from the Edit menu

Keynote takes dictation through the Mac's own Dictation, and Apple's Keynote guide starts it from the Edit menu. Apple's Mac guide says Dictation works anywhere you can type, so a title, a text box and the presenter notes all count. In Keynote, Apple Dictation is one menu item away, and it costs nothing.

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 start Dictation without the Edit menu.

Step 2: Dictate into the slide or the notes

  • You: Open the presentation and place the insertion point where you want to begin, in a text box or the presenter notes, or select the text you want to replace. Then choose Edit, Start Dictation.
  • macOS: Shows the microphone when it is ready. If you have never used Dictation, guided setup instructions appear first.
  • Check: Words appear as you speak. Say punctuation by name, such as comma or apostrophe.

Step 3: Stop when you are done

  • You: Click Done below the microphone, as Apple's Keynote guide puts it, or press Esc, the Microphone key or your Dictation shortcut, as Apple's Mac guide puts it.
  • Check: New speech no longer appears. Words Dictation was unsure of are underlined in blue; click one to pick an alternative.

Say: In Apple Dictation, between two points on a slide.

new line

What happens: Dictation starts a new line. Apple says the break appears when you finish dictating.

The Mac dictation commands list has every spoken command. Two limits come with it. Dictation stops automatically when it hears no speech for 30 seconds, and the 30-second limit page explains why. And your voice may be processed on your Mac or sent to Siri servers: the text below Dictation in Keyboard settings says which.

YapToText's Dictation settings page on a Mac: the Keys, Recording, Microphone and Delivery cards.
Figure 1. For comparison, YapToText's Dictation page: Auto-stop after silence is Off by default, so you can stop and look at a slide without the dictation ending.

Dictate presenter notes

Presenter notes are words you will say out loud anyway, which makes them the easiest part of a deck to dictate. They stay hidden until you show them. Show the notes, click into them, then talk the way you would talk to the room.

Step 1: Show the notes

  • You: Click the View menu button in the toolbar and choose Show Presenter Notes. Then click a slide in the slide navigator.
  • Keynote: Shows a white presenter notes area below the slide.
  • Check: The slide selected in the navigator is the one the notes are for.

Step 2: Click into the notes and dictate

  • You: Click in the presenter notes area, then start Apple Dictation as above, or tap Right Command for YapToText.
  • Check: The words land under the slide. In the navigator, the thumbnails for slides with presenter notes have a small square in the top-right corner, so you can see which slides still need notes.

To change how the notes look, Apple says to select the text, click the Format button in the toolbar and use the text controls in the sidebar. Apple also says you can add or edit notes in the presenter display while you rehearse a slideshow or play it on a separate display. I have not tested YapToText in the presenter display, so dictate notes in the editing window.

If you also present from PowerPoint, the PowerPoint dictation guide covers its slide notes.

Use YapToText in Keynote, free and on device

YapToText is the free Mac app I built for dictating into every app, Keynote included. It runs Whisper on your Mac to hear you and puts the words at the Keynote cursor, with no account and no subscription. Click into the text, tap, talk, tap, and the words land where the Keynote cursor was.

Out of the box it has no silence timeout, so you can stop and look at a slide for as long as you need. It needs an Apple silicon Mac with macOS 14 or later, and it is free on the Mac App Store.

Step 1: Click where the words go

  • You: Double-click the placeholder text on a slide, as Apple's guide says to before typing your own, or click into a text box or the presenter notes. The Text button in the toolbar adds a new text box.
  • YapToText: Nothing yet. It types into the app in front, never into its own window.
  • Check: A text cursor is blinking where the words should go, or the placeholder text is selected so your words replace it.

Step 2: Tap Right Command and talk

  • You: Tap Right Command once and say the text.
  • 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 on the slide or in the notes. If they went to the clipboard instead, Accessibility is not on yet; the fixes below cover it.
YapToText's floating dictation panel on a Mac: a live waveform, the sentence being typed, and cancel, pause and stop buttons.
Figure 2. The words form in the panel while you talk, and land in the text box or the presenter notes when you tap the key again.

A deck asks a few things of dictation that a chat box does not:

  • Notes at speaking length. A dictation runs until you tap the key again; only a safety stop at 30 minutes ends one on its own.
  • Sentences that join up. Intelligent Insert reads the words around the cursor first, so a dictation dropped into the middle of a line starts lowercase and gets one space where words would collide. The Intelligent Insert guide explains it.
  • Names it should know. Put product names and jargon in a dictionary, which shapes what the speech model hears.
  • A safety net. History keeps your last 500 dictations with their audio and deletes anything older than 30 days, unless you change either setting, so notes that land on the wrong slide are not lost.

Turn speech into bullet-style slide text

Slide text is rarely full sentences. Note mode turns what you say into short headings and bullets, with action items pulled into a list, and nothing added that you did not say. Auto mode never turns speech into a bulleted list on its own, so you ask for one. Talk the point through once, and let Note mode cut it into slide-sized lines.

  • For one dictation. Press 4 while you talk, which is Note in the default order of modes. With Auto on, the next dictation goes back to Auto.
  • For plain bullets. End the dictation with "as a bullet list" while Auto mode is on.
  • For every dictation in Keynote. Turn Auto mode off, open Note mode's editor on the Modes page, and add Keynote under Apps that use this mode. While Auto is on, it decides how each dictation is written, so this takes over only with Auto off.

Say: At the end of a dictation into a text box, while Auto mode is on.

as a bullet list

What happens: The phrase is not typed. Auto mode formats what you said as a bulleted list.

YapToText's Switch Mode list: Auto, Raw Transcription, Clean Up, Note, Email, Message and Code Comment, numbered 1 to 7.
Figure 3. In the default order Note is number 4, so pressing 4 while you talk turns that one dictation into short headings and bullets.

I have not tested how Keynote formats a list that YapToText pastes. Apple's list guide says Keynote detects a list as you type when a line begins with a dash, or with a number or letter followed by a period, and that you can format any text as a list: select it, then choose a list style from the pop-up menu next to Bullets & Lists. Tab and Shift-Tab move an item in or out a level.

Note mode needs a cleanup model, which the App Store build includes. The modes guide covers Note mode's instructions, and the Auto mode guide lists every phrase Auto follows.

Tighten a line with Quick Edit

A line that reads fine in your head is often too long on a slide. Quick Edit rewrites a selection by voice. Select the line, tap Right Option, say "make this shorter", tap again.

  • You: Highlight the words on the slide or in the notes, tap Right Option, say what you want, such as "make this shorter" or "fix the grammar", and tap Right Option again.
  • YapToText: Shows the Quick Edit card, purple out of the box, with your instruction in quotes, then applies it on your Mac and replaces the selection.
  • Check: The card says Done. If it says Nothing changed or Already like that, the text stayed as it was.
The purple Quick Edit card listening for an edit, showing the spoken request make it sound more formal.
Figure 4. Select the line first, then tap Right Option and say the change; the card shows what it heard.

What you say is an instruction, so none of it is typed. "Turn it into bullet points" works on a selection too. While the card says Applying your edit, Esc cancels and leaves your text as it was. The rewrite comes from a small model on your Mac, so read a long one before you present it. The Quick Edit guide has the rest.

Compare where your voice goes

Checked October 5, 2026, on Apple's support pages. Features change, so check before you rely on one.

Apple Dictation in KeynoteYapToText
CostFree, built into macOSFree, no paid tier
How you start itEdit, Start Dictation, the Microphone key or your Dictation shortcutRight Command by default, or a key you choose
Where your voice goesOn the Mac or to Siri servers; Keyboard settings says whichStays on your Mac
InternetMay need one, per AppleNot needed in normal use
Silence timeoutStops after 30 seconds of silenceNone by default
Spoken commandsPunctuation, formatting, capitals and symbolsPunctuation, emoji and snippets
RequirementDictation turned on in Keyboard settingsApple silicon, macOS 14 or later

YapToText never sends your voice anywhere. If your words should stay on your Mac until you present them, the voice row decides it. The same choice comes up in a document, and the guide to dictation in Pages covers what is different there.

If dictation is not working in Keynote

Apple's checklist starts with the Dictation switch, the language and the shortcut, and in Keynote the insertion point comes before all of them. Click into the text first: dictation types at the insertion point, or over the text you select. Climb this ladder, smallest step first:

  1. Click into the text, not the box. Apple's Keynote guide says one click on placeholder text selects its text box, and a double-click lets you type your own. Dictation types at the insertion point or over selected text, so double-click the placeholder, then choose Edit, Start Dictation.
  2. Show the presenter notes. If the notes are hidden, there is nowhere to click. Use the View menu button in the toolbar and choose Show Presenter Notes.
  3. Turn Dictation on. In System Settings, Keyboard, make sure Dictation is on. If Edit, Start Dictation works in Keynote and your key does not, only the shortcut is wrong.
  4. 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.
  5. Check the microphone and language. Under Dictation, choose your microphone next to Microphone source, and click Edit next to Languages to select the language and region you speak.
  6. Turn off Voice Control. When Voice Control is on, standard Dictation is not available, and you dictate through Voice Control instead. The Voice Control versus Dictation guide explains the difference.

The Mac dictation not working guide goes through Apple Dictation fix by fix.

If YapToText's words do not land in Keynote

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.
  2. If Keynote beeps. Intelligent Insert reads the text around your cursor with a few invisible keystrokes, and some apps answer one with the alert sound. With Keynote open, go to the Dictation page, choose Turn off in another app in the Delivery card and pick Keynote, or lower Alert volume in System Settings, Sound, which silences only alert beeps.
  3. If pasting misbehaves. With Keynote open, choose Add App Override under Per-app method in Settings, Advanced, pick Keynote and keep Type character-by-character.

The troubleshooting guide covers the rest.

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.
  • YapToText. It has no Keynote commands: it does not add slides, move between them or apply a list style. It types at the cursor, and layout stays Keynote's job. I have not tested how Keynote formats a list it pastes, or dictating into the presenter display. It needs an Apple silicon Mac with macOS 14 or later, and nothing is claimed for Intel Macs.

The short version

  • Apple Dictation. Edit, Start Dictation, free and built in, for pauses under 30 seconds.
  • YapToText. Free and on device, with no clock: tap Right Command, talk, tap again.
  • Slide text. Press 4 for Note mode, or say "as a bullet list", then tighten a line with Quick Edit.
  • The first fix. Double-click into the text, or show the presenter notes, before you start.

Dictate the notes the way you will say them, and let the slide carry the short version.

If something here does not match what you see in Keynote, 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 in Keynote on a Mac?

Yes. Apple's Keynote guide says to place the insertion point, choose Edit, Start Dictation and speak when the microphone appears. YapToText also types at the Keynote cursor: tap Right Command, talk, and tap it again.

How do I dictate presenter notes in Keynote?

Click the View menu button in the toolbar and choose Show Presenter Notes, select the slide, then click in the notes area below it. Start Apple Dictation or YapToText there, and the words land in the notes.

Why is dictation not working in Keynote on my Mac?

Start with the insertion point: one click on placeholder text selects its text box, so double-click into the text first. Then check that Dictation is on in System Settings, Keyboard, that you press the shortcut shown there, and that Voice Control is off.

Why does dictation stop in Keynote?

It heard 30 seconds of silence. Apple's Dictation stops on its own after 30 seconds without speech, in Keynote and everywhere else. YapToText has no silence timeout by default.

Can I dictate bullet points in Keynote?

With YapToText, press 4 for Note mode while you talk, or end with "as a bullet list" while Auto mode is on. If the lines land without bullets, select them and pick a list style from the menu next to Bullets and Lists, as Apple's list guide describes.