Live transcription on a Mac: words on screen while you talk

By Ryleigh NewmanPublished October 22, 2026

Live transcription means seeing your words appear while you are still speaking, instead of all at once at the end. On a Mac there are three ways to get it. Apple Dictation types as you talk. Live Captions shows a running transcript of the Mac's audio or the room, which is for following speech, not writing. And YapToText, the free app I make, shows your words in its pop-up as they form and can type them into the app while you talk.

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.

Which one you want

• To write by voice and watch it happen. Apple Dictation, or YapToText with its live preview.
• To read along with a call, a video or a person in the room. Live Captions, in System Settings, Accessibility.
• To transcribe something already recorded. A file transcriber. YapToText's Transcribe file does that, and so does MacWhisper.

Live preview in YapToText

While you talk, the pop-up shows your voice as a wave and, in its Expanded layout, your words as they are recognized. That is Live transcription preview, in Settings, on the Advanced tab, in the Text output card. It is on as the app comes. Its note says it costs extra battery with Whisper models, so turn it off if you would rather have only the wave.

The preview is what you watch. The final text, after cleanup, is what lands when you stop. The final text can differ a little from the preview, most often because a mode tidied it.

Typing while you talk

One more switch in the same card, Type text live as you speak, off as the app comes, types the words at the cursor while you are still talking. With an AI mode, the polished version is swapped in at the end. It needs Accessibility, and it shows only while Insert text automatically is on. Most people are better served by the preview, since text that changes under your eyes in a document is distracting, but it suits a long dictation into a chat box where you want to see the words land.

Apple Dictation and Live Captions

Apple Dictation writes into the text box as you speak and shows a microphone at the cursor. It stops by itself after 30 seconds without speech, and the guide to Mac dictation covers its settings. Live Captions shows a floating window of captions for any audio the Mac plays, or the microphone, processed on the device. Apple says it needs a Mac with Apple silicon and is not available in every language or region. It never types into an app.

About the author. I am Ryleigh Newman, and I make YapToText. My hands do not work well enough to type for long, so I dictate nearly everything, and I built this app because I needed it. More about me and the app.

Related

• Live Captions on a Mac: real-time captions for calls, videos and the room around you
• Speech to text for Mac that runs on the Mac
• The floating dictation panel: your voice as a wave, your words as they form
• Transcribe an audio or video file
• How to use dictation on a Mac: turn it on, talk, and stop
• Voice to text on a Mac, when it has to replace the keyboard

Sources

• https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/get-captions-of-spoken-and-computer-audio-mchldd11f4fd/mac (checked 2026-10-10)
• https://github.com/ryleighnewman/YapToText (checked 2026-10-22)
• https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yaptotext/id6786382289 (checked 2026-10-22)

Questions