Guides

Speech to text for dyslexia on a Mac: say it, check it, hear it back

By Ryleigh Newman · Published October 5, 2026

Speech to text for dyslexia on a Mac means saying a word instead of spelling it: you talk, and the app types the spelling at your cursor in any app. The useful setup has three parts: something that types what you say, a way to look at the text before it lands, and a way to hear it read back. YapToText, the free app I built, does the first two on your Mac, and the Mac itself can do the third.

I should be plain about where I am coming from. I built YapToText because my hands make typing difficult, not with dyslexia in mind. So this page is about how the tools fit together, and I am not a teacher or a specialist. It makes no promises about reading or spelling. It describes what each setting does, and you are the judge of whether it fits. The app is free with no account, so trying it costs an afternoon, not money. The limits are further down.

Download for free. No account, nothing locked, macOS 14 or later on Apple silicon. Source on GitHub.

Steps

1. Click where the words go, tap Right Command, say the sentence, and tap Right Command again.
2. On the Dictionaries page, add names and terms with the spelling the app hears in Heard and your spelling in Replace with.
3. Turn on Review before inserting in Settings, Advanced, Text output, then press Command Return to insert or Esc to discard.
4. Turn on Speak selection in System Settings, Accessibility, Read & Speak, select the text and press Option-Esc to hear it.
5. Select a sentence, tap Right Option, say the change, and tap Right Option again.

Say the word, skip the spelling

The idea is simple: you say the word, and the speech model writes the spelling. Whisper, the model inside YapToText, hears you on your Mac and types at the cursor, in a document, an email, a chat box or a form. You choose the word; the app does the letters.

Step 1: Click where the words go

• You: Click into the document, the email or the box you want to write in.
• YapToText: Nothing yet. It types into the app in front, never into its own window.
• Check: The cursor is blinking where you want the words.

Step 2: Tap Right Command and say it

• You: Tap Right Command once and say the sentence the way you would say it to a person.
• 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 and pastes it at the cursor.
• Check: The words are where the cursor was. If they went to the clipboard instead, Accessibility is not on yet.

Two things happen without you asking. Whisper punctuates ordinary speech by itself, and for a mark it cannot guess you say its name at the end of the clause, such as question mark or new paragraph; the spoken punctuation guide lists every name. And Intelligent Insert reads the words around your cursor, so a dictation dropped into the middle of a sentence matches the spacing and capitalization around it.

YapToText is free on the Mac App Store, with no account, no subscription and no paid tier. It needs an Apple silicon Mac with macOS 14 or later, and your voice never leaves the Mac. The first dictation guide covers the two permissions it asks for.

Teach it the names and terms you use

A speech model is good at everyday words and weaker at the ones that matter most to you: a teacher's surname, a colleague's name, a course code, a street. Dictionaries fix that. Each entry says when you hear this, write that, and it applies to every dictation from then on. Teach a spelling once, and it is applied to every dictation after that.

Step 1: Add the entry

• You: On the Dictionaries page, in a dictionary such as General, type the spelling the app wrote in Heard and the spelling you want in Replace with, then press Add.
• YapToText: Saves it and uses it from your next dictation. The same entries are handed to Whisper before it listens, which leans it toward your spelling.
• Check: Say the word in a sentence and see it land spelled your way.

Dictionary entry: My name, the way the microphone hears it and the way I spell it.

Heard: riley
Replace with: Ryleigh

What happens: Every riley in a dictation is written Ryleigh, and Ryleigh is also handed to Whisper as a word to listen for.

To find what goes in Heard, open History and click Show pipeline details on a dictation where the word came out wrong: the raw transcript shows what the speech model wrote. You do not have to type an entry at all, either:

• From a selection. Select the right spelling anywhere on screen, such as in an email someone sent you, tap the Quick Edit key, Right Option, and say add this to my dictionary.
• From a correction. Right after a dictation lands, say replace, the wrong word, with, the right word. Fix the same mishearing twice and the Home page asks Make this correction stick?
• From a suggestion. With Suggest fixes from my dictations on, the default, words the app keeps having to recapitalize show up under Suggested for you. Nothing is added until you press the plus button.

The Dictionaries guide covers Whole word, Case and keeping several dictionaries.

Choose how much it changes your words

After Whisper hears you, a mode decides what happens to the words. Three are worth knowing for this, and all of them keep what you meant:

• Auto mode, the default. Ordinary prose gets a careful pass that fixes misheard words, punctuation and capitalization, and keeps your wording, tone and sentence structure. Short or casual messages stay exactly as spoken.
• Clean Up. Removes filler words and false starts, fixes grammar, capitalization and punctuation, and repairs words the microphone clearly misheard. It writes spoken web and email addresses in proper form, and never deletes, shortens or summarizes a sentence.
• Raw Transcription. Exactly what the speech model heard, with basic punctuation and no AI model at all.

While you talk, the number keys pick a mode for that one dictation. In the default order with Auto on, 2 is Raw Transcription and 3 is Clean Up, and the next dictation goes back to Auto.

The careful pass runs on a small model on your Mac, and its instructions say not to rephrase, drop or invent anything. If the result reads like an assistant's reply or grows well past what you said, the app throws it away and types the raw transcript instead. Cleanup fixes the transcript; it does not rewrite you. The Auto mode guide lists what the careful pass will not do, and the modes guide covers each mode.

Look before it lands

By default the words go straight to your cursor. If you would rather see them first, Review before inserting holds the finished text in a small floating editor until you say so. Review before inserting gives you a look before anything reaches the page.

Step 1: Turn it on

• You: Open Settings, Advanced, Text output, and turn on Review before inserting. It is off by default.
• YapToText: From the next dictation, finished text opens in the floating editor instead of landing at the cursor.
• Check: Only for long dictations (200+ characters) is on while Review is on, so short ones still land directly. Switch it off if you want every dictation held.

Step 2: Read it, then decide

• You: Read the text in the editor.
• YapToText: Command Return inserts it at your cursor; Esc discards it.
• Check: The text lands only when you press Command Return.

History keeps your last 500 dictations for 30 days by default, each with what the speech model heard and what was delivered, and every entry can be copied or inserted again.

Have your Mac read it back

Reading back what you wrote is half the job, and hearing it can be easier than reading it. YapToText does not read text aloud. The Mac does, with Apple's Speak selection, and the two sit side by side. Dictate with YapToText, listen with the Mac.

Step 1: Turn on Speak selection

• You: Choose Apple menu, System Settings, click Accessibility in the sidebar, then click Read & Speak. On earlier versions of macOS, Apple's guide calls it Spoken Content. Turn on Speak selection.
• macOS: Speaks the text you select whenever you press its keyboard shortcut, Option-Esc by default.
• Check: The switch is on. Click the button next to Speak selection to change the shortcut.

Step 2: Select the text and listen

• You: Select the sentence or paragraph you just dictated and press Option-Esc.
• macOS: Reads it aloud. Apple says that if no text is selected, the available text items in the current window are spoken.
• Check: You hear the words that are on the page, not the ones you meant to say.

Apple's Read & Speak settings can highlight words, sentences or both as they are spoken, each in a color you choose, and its guide to having your Mac speak text describes an onscreen controller for changing the speaking rate and skipping forward or back.

One honest note: I have not tested Speak selection alongside YapToText's keys. If Option-Esc ever wakes Quick Edit, which sits on Right Option, change one of the two: Speak selection's shortcut in Apple's settings, or the Quick Edit key on YapToText's Quick Edit page.

There is a second kind of read-back. Every History entry keeps the recording by default, and its play button lets you hear what you actually said. Hearing the recording settles whether you said it or the speech model misheard it.

Fix it by voice with Quick Edit

When a sentence needs changing, you do not have to go back to the keyboard. Quick Edit rewrites selected text by voice, in any app, and the result replaces your selection. Select it, say the change, and nothing is retyped.

Step 1: Select the words

• You: Highlight the sentence, or the one word, you want changed.
• YapToText: Nothing yet.
• Check: The words are highlighted.

Step 2: Tap Right Option and say the change

• You: Tap Right Option, say what you want, and tap it again.
• YapToText: Shows your instruction in quotes on the Quick Edit card, applies it on your Mac and replaces the selection.
• Check: The card says Done. If nothing changed, it says so.

Say: With one wrong word selected, after tapping the Quick Edit key.

change this to necessary

What happens: An exact swap skips the AI and replaces the selection with the words exactly as you said them.

Other things to say: fix the grammar, make this shorter, capitalize this, or turn it into bullet points. Right after a dictation lands, two phrases work with no key at all, within 30 seconds: scratch that takes the dictation back, and replace X with Y swaps one word. The Quick Edit guide lists the rest.

If a word keeps coming out wrong

A word that comes out wrong the same way every time is the easy case. Climb this ladder, smallest step first:

1. Read the raw transcript. In History, Show pipeline details shows what the speech model heard. Use that exact spelling in Heard.
2. Add the other spellings. If it hears the word differently on different days, add each one, or press Generate variations on the entry.
3. Check the switches. The dictionary must be switched on, and Whole word can stop a match inside a longer word.
4. Move closer to the microphone. In Settings, General, Microphone, say a few words: the app rates how clearly it hears you and says what to change.
5. Listen to it. Play the recording in History. If the word is clear on the recording, it belongs in a dictionary.

A word that sounds like another word can still land as the wrong one, which is why the read-back step matters. A consistent mishearing is what dictionaries are for; the read-back catches the rest. The troubleshooting guide covers anything else.

What it cannot do

• Make claims about dyslexia. It is a dictation app. It was not designed, studied or tuned for dyslexia; it is a general tool that happens to fit some of the same jobs.
• Read aloud. YapToText does not speak your text. That is Apple's Speak selection, which is part of macOS and not connected to the app.
• Promise accuracy. The speech model is Whisper Large v3 Turbo, a general-purpose model. I have not measured an accuracy rate, so I will not quote one.
• Choose the word for you. It types what you say. If the word you want is not coming, the app cannot supply it.
• Run everywhere. It needs an Apple silicon Mac with macOS 14 or later. There is no iPhone, iPad, Windows or Linux version, and nothing is claimed for Intel Macs.

If you are comparing assistive technology for a whole setup, the accessibility page covers Voice Control and VoiceOver alongside the app, and the guide for writers covers long drafts.

The short version

• Say it. Tap Right Command, talk, tap again, and the spelling lands at your cursor in any app.
• Teach it. Put names and terms in Dictionaries once, or say add this to my dictionary over a selected word.
• Check it. Review before inserting holds the text for a look, and Apple's Speak selection reads it back with Option-Esc.
• Fix it. Select it, tap Right Option, and say the change.

Say the word, look at it, hear it, then send it.

If you are dyslexic and something here does not fit how you write, I would like to hear it, because I built this for my own hands. Open an issue on GitHub. Every one gets read.

Download 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.

Related

• Dictionaries: teach YapToText your names and jargon
• Quick Edit: select text anywhere and say what you want changed
• Free dictation software for disabled people on a Mac
• Auto mode: dictation that works out what it is
• Dictation for tremor, Parkinson's, MS and ALS: what to set first
• Dictation for ADHD on a Mac: get the thought down, sort it out later
• Speechify voice typing on the Mac, and a free on-device alternative
• Speech to text for dysgraphia on a Mac: say it, shape it, check it

Sources

• https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-read-speak-settings-for-accessibility-spch638/mac (checked 2026-10-05)
• https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mh27448/mac (checked 2026-10-05)
• https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yaptotext/id6786382289 (checked 2026-10-03)

Questions