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Obsidian voice to text on a Mac: dictate Markdown notes, and keep them all local

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To get voice to text in Obsidian on a Mac, click into a note, press your Dictation shortcut or the Microphone key, and talk: Apple Dictation, built into macOS and free, works anywhere you can type, and an Obsidian note is plain text at a cursor. Obsidian's own Audio recorder core plugin does something different: it records audio and saves the recording in a note.

YapToText, the free app I built, types into Obsidian at the cursor, runs Whisper on your Mac, and turns a ramble into headings and bullets when you ask. Obsidian keeps your notes as Markdown files on your Mac, and YapToText keeps your voice there too. I built it because my hands make typing difficult, and I dictate every day. If something will not start, the fixes for dictation not working in Obsidian 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. What Obsidian does with your voice on its own
  3. Use Apple Dictation in Obsidian
    1. Step 1: Turn Dictation on once
    2. Step 2: Dictate into the note
  4. Use YapToText in Obsidian, 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. Write Markdown by voice: headings, bullets and tags
    1. Ask for structure
    2. Say the marks
  6. Transcribe a recording into a note
    1. Step 1: Pick the mode, then drop the file
    2. Step 2: Put it in the note
    3. Bring your dictation history into the vault
  7. Keep the notes and the voice on your Mac
  8. If dictation is not working in Obsidian
    1. If YapToText's words do not land in Obsidian
  9. What each one cannot do
  10. The short version
  11. Questions

Steps

  1. Turn on Dictation in System Settings, Keyboard, Dictation.
  2. Open Obsidian and click into the note where you want the words.
  3. Press the Microphone key or your Dictation shortcut.
  4. Speak, saying new line or new paragraph for breaks.
  5. Press Esc, the Microphone key or the shortcut when you are done.

What Obsidian does with your voice on its own

Obsidian's help lists Audio recorder among its core plugins, the ones built and supported by the Obsidian team, and describes it as recording and saving audio directly in a note. Obsidian's Audio recorder keeps the sound; dictation gives you the words.

  • You: If it is not on yet, open Settings, Core plugins, and turn on Audio recorder. Obsidian's help says some core plugins are disabled by default.
  • Obsidian: Records audio and saves the recording in your note.
  • Check: The recording is in the note. Obsidian's description of the plugin says nothing about a transcript, so for text, use dictation, or transcribe the recording afterwards, as the section on recordings shows.

Obsidian's community plugin directory also lists voice plugins. One, Dictation, records through the core Audio recorder and transcribes with a provider you choose; another, Voice Scribe, says it transcribes on your device with Whisper. I have not tested any of them, so read each plugin's own page for where your audio goes before you install it.

None of that is needed to dictate. Obsidian's help says it stores notes as Markdown-formatted plain text files in a vault, a folder on your local file system, so anything that types at a cursor can write a note.

Use Apple Dictation in Obsidian

Apple Dictation is the free option already on your Mac, and Apple says it works anywhere you can type. 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 Obsidian.

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, which ends a long thought mid-note; 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, and that matters if you chose Obsidian because your notes stay local.

Use YapToText in Obsidian, free and on device

YapToText is the free Mac app I built for dictating into every app. It runs Whisper Large v3 Turbo (Q5) on your Mac, so if you searched for Obsidian and Whisper together, this is Whisper with no plugin, no API key and no account, typing into Obsidian 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 file 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. If they went to the clipboard instead, Accessibility is not on yet; the fixes below cover it.
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 Obsidian note.

Obsidian is not on any of Auto mode's app lists, so it gets no lean: ordinary prose gets a conservative pass that fixes what was misheard and rewrites nothing, and nothing turns into a list unless you ask. There is no silence timeout by default, so a pause to think does not end the note. 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.

Write Markdown by voice: headings, bullets and tags

Obsidian reads Markdown. Its formatting help says up to six # symbols before a line make it a heading, and a hyphen, an asterisk or a plus sign before the text makes an unordered list item. Note mode gives a ramble headings and bullets, and a few spoken commands give you the marks.

Ask for structure

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 dictation with "as a note". For a plain list, end with this instead:

Say: At the end of a dictation in Obsidian, while Auto mode is on.

as a bullet list

What happens: The phrase is not typed. Auto mode turns what you said into a bulleted list, the one way to get bullets from Auto without picking Note mode.

Note mode is a small model following instructions, and I have not checked that it writes headings and bullets 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 Obsidian notes.

Turn my dictation into a short Markdown note. Use ## for headings and a hyphen for each bullet. 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.

With Show in the quick switcher on, the new mode gets its own number key. To use it for every dictation in Obsidian, turn Auto mode off and add Obsidian under Apps that use this mode; while Auto is on, it decides how each dictation is written.

YapToText's Modes page: Auto on top, then Raw Transcription, Clean Up, Note, Email, Message and Code Comment, numbered 2 to 7.
Figure 2. The Modes page lists Note as number 4; right-click it and choose Duplicate to start an Obsidian version with instructions of your own.

Say the marks

  • Two-word names. Say "question mark", "new line" or "new paragraph" at the end of a clause, with no extra word.
  • One-word names. Put insert in front, because Require the word insert before a command is on by default: "insert colon", "insert asterisk".
  • Tags. Obsidian's help says a hash symbol followed by a keyword, such as #meeting, makes a tag. Say "insert hashtag meeting", and the # glues to the next word, so you get #meeting.
  • Today's date. Say "insert today's date" for a dated entry. Obsidian's Daily notes core plugin also creates and opens notes based on the current date.

The spoken punctuation guide lists all 45 punctuation commands, and the Commands page lets you add a phrase that types any text you write, with \n for a line break. The modes guide covers writing instructions, and the Auto mode guide lists every phrase Auto follows.

Transcribe a recording into a note

A voice memo, a lecture recording or a ramble from your phone can become a note in your vault. YapToText transcribes the file on your Mac and inserts it at your cursor in Obsidian.

Step 1: Pick the mode, then drop the file

  • You: On YapToText's Utility page, in the Transcribe a file card, pick Note in the mode menu, or Raw Transcription for every word exactly. Drop the audio or video file on the card, or click Choose File.
  • YapToText: Reads the file by its content, not its extension, and transcribes it on your Mac. A long file is cut at quiet moments and handled in pieces.
  • Check: The text appears in the card. A file with no speech in it says none was found.

Step 2: Put it in the note

  • You: Click into the note in Obsidian first, then come back to YapToText and click Insert, or click Copy and paste it yourself.
  • YapToText: Insert types the text into the app you were last using.
  • Check: The transcript is in the note, as plain text with no timestamps or speaker labels.

The card takes anything macOS can decode, with containers such as M4A, MP3, WAV, CAF and MP4. I have not tested a recording made by Obsidian's Audio recorder, so if the card shows an error for one, export the audio to a common format such as M4A or WAV and drop that instead.

YapToText's menu bar panel: Start Dictation, mode and microphone pickers, Transcribe file, Regenerate and Insert last.
Figure 3. Transcribe file is also in the menu bar panel; that route uses your current mode and files the transcript in History under the file's name.

Bring your dictation history into the vault

The Export button at the bottom of YapToText's History page writes the visible list to one Markdown file, yaptotext-history.md, with each entry under a heading of its mode and date, and filters apply. Save it into your vault folder: Obsidian's help says notes are plain text files you can manage with other apps, and that it refreshes your vault to keep up with changes made outside it. The History guide covers search and export, and the guide to transcribing audio files on a Mac for free covers formats and long files.

Keep the notes and the voice on your Mac

Many people pick Obsidian because the notes are files on their own Mac. Dictation can undo that if your voice goes somewhere else on the way in. Local notes deserve local dictation: YapToText never sends your voice anywhere.

Checked October 5, 2026, on Apple's and Obsidian's own help pages. Features change, so check before you rely on one.

Apple DictationObsidian Audio recorderYapToText
What lands in the noteTyped wordsA recordingTyped words, as said or as a note
Where your voice goesOn the Mac or to Siri servers; Keyboard settings says whichSaved as a recording in your noteStays on your Mac
Long pausesStops after 30 seconds of silenceNot statedNo silence timeout by default
CostFree, built into macOSA core plugin, built into ObsidianFree, no paid tier
RequirementDictation turned on in Keyboard settingsTurned on in Settings, Core pluginsApple silicon, macOS 14 or later

YapToText's speech model and cleanup model both run on the Mac, there is no account, and the only network use is a model download you start yourself. Its own History lives in the app's folder on your Mac, and nothing is synced by the app. If you sync your vault with a service, your notes go where that service sends them, but your voice was never part of it. You can prove the dictation half in a minute: turn Wi-Fi off and dictate a sentence, as the offline dictation guide walks through.

App Store poster headed Nothing leaves your Mac, over YapToText's AI Models page with both models marked Included.
Figure 4. Both of YapToText's models are marked Included, so a note in your vault is heard and shaped on your Mac, the same place Obsidian keeps it.

The guide to running Whisper locally on a Mac goes deeper on the speech model itself.

If dictation is not working in Obsidian

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 file list, the search field or a note's title bar.
  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. Pick the microphone by name. Under Dictation, choose your microphone next to Microphone source instead of Automatic, then raise its input volume in System Settings, Sound, Input.
  5. Turn off Voice Control. When Voice Control is on, standard Dictation is not available, and you dictate through Voice Control instead.

The Mac dictation not working guide covers each of these in detail.

If YapToText's words do not land in Obsidian

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 mark comes out as a word. One-word names need insert in front, and two-word names fire at the end of a clause.
  3. If a note name or term keeps coming out wrong. Add it on the Dictionaries page, with what Whisper heard under Heard and your spelling under Replace with. The dictionaries guide shows how.
  4. If Obsidian beeps. Intelligent Insert reads the text around your cursor with a few invisible keystrokes, and some apps answer one with the alert sound. With Obsidian open, go to the Dictation page, choose Turn off in another app in the Delivery card and pick Obsidian, or lower Alert volume in System Settings, Sound.
  5. If pasting misbehaves. With Obsidian open, choose Add App Override under Per-app method in Settings, Advanced, pick Obsidian 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.
  • Obsidian's Audio recorder. Obsidian describes it as recording and saving audio in a note; it gives you the sound, not typed words.
  • YapToText. It types text: it does not attach audio to a note, make links between notes, label speakers or add timestamps. Its spoken commands are punctuation, emoji and snippets, so folding, linking and the rest stay Obsidian's job. 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, and nothing is claimed for Intel Macs.

The short version

  • Built in. Click into the note and press your Dictation shortcut, for pauses under 30 seconds.
  • Obsidian's own. The Audio recorder core plugin saves a recording in the note, not a transcript.
  • On device. YapToText: tap Right Command, talk, tap again, and press Note's number key for headings and bullets.
  • Recordings. Drop the file on the Transcribe a file card and insert the text into your note.

Your notes are local files, and your voice can stay local too. If something here does not match what you see in Obsidian, 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

Does Obsidian have voice to text?

Not as typed words out of the box. Obsidian's Audio recorder core plugin records and saves audio in a note. To get text, use Apple Dictation or a dictation app such as YapToText, which type at the cursor in any note.

How do I dictate into Obsidian on a Mac?

Click into a note, press your Dictation shortcut or the Microphone key, and talk; press Esc when you are done. With YapToText, tap Right Command, talk, and tap it again, and the words are typed on your Mac.

Can I use Whisper with Obsidian?

Yes, without a plugin. YapToText runs Whisper Large v3 Turbo on your Mac and types the result into Obsidian at the cursor. Obsidian's community plugin directory also lists voice plugins, which I have not tested.

Can dictation make Markdown headings and bullet points in Obsidian?

With YapToText, end a dictation with as a bullet list, or press Note mode's number key for headings and bullets. If you want them written with Markdown marks every time, duplicate Note mode and say so in its instructions, then test it in Try it out.

Is dictating into Obsidian private?

It depends on the dictation tool. Obsidian stores notes as files on your Mac, YapToText transcribes on your Mac, and Apple's Keyboard settings say whether Apple Dictation sends your voice to Siri servers.