Guides

Speechify voice typing on the Mac, and a free on-device alternative

By Ryleigh Newman · Published October 5, 2026

Speechify does offer voice typing on the Mac: its Mac app types what you say into any app, and Speechify says that voice typing is free and unlimited today, though it adds that this may change. YapToText is a free alternative for the dictation half only: it is open source under the GPL, both of its models run on your Mac, and there is no paid tier to change. Speechify is best known for something YapToText does not do at all, reading text aloud, and it runs on Windows, iPhone, Android and in the browser as well as the Mac. I built YapToText, so read this with that in mind. Every Speechify fact here comes from speechify.com, read on October 5, 2026.

My hands make typing difficult, so I dictate every day, and I wanted the dictation app I depend on to be one anyone can read and nobody pays for. If you love Speechify for listening, you do not have to give that up: keeping Speechify for reading aloud is covered further down.

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

Steps

1. Install YapToText from the Mac App Store and open it.
2. Press Continue next to Microphone and Accessibility, and switch YapToText on in System Settings, Privacy & Security, Accessibility.
3. Stop using Speechify's voice typing, keep Right Command as the dictation key, and dictate one sentence into a text field.
4. Select a name on screen, tap Right Option, say add this to my dictionary, and tap Right Option again.

What Speechify voice typing is, from its own site

Speechify describes its Mac app as a place to use text to speech, voice typing and more, and its voice typing works across the apps on your Mac: email, documents, Slack, Notion, browsers and the rest. On the Mac you hold the Fn (Globe) key and talk for a quick phrase, or press Fn Space for hands-free mode and tap Fn again to stop. There is also a microphone button in the Dock. Setup asks for the microphone, which Speechify says is only active while you dictate, and Accessibility, so it can type into your apps.

• Cleanup. Speechify says its voice typing removes filler words, corrects grammar, fixes punctuation and formats sentences as you go.
• Learning your words. It says accuracy improves over time as it learns your vocabulary and speaking habits, and that this carries across your devices.
• Price. Voice typing is free and unlimited, and Speechify says it does not need a subscription today, though that may change in the future. The Mac app is a free download, and Speechify Premium, its paid plan, adds features beyond voice typing.
• Where your voice goes. Speechify's pages describe its voice typing as cloud-based AI. Its voice typing page also says the app ships with a built-in on-device model, so you can dictate offline, and that it falls back to on-device transcription if your connection drops mid-session. It says your voice is not stored by default.
• Platforms. Speechify lists voice typing on Mac, Windows, iOS, Android and in browsers.
• Mac requirement. Speechify's launch announcement says macOS Ventura 13 or newer, and its voice typing page says macOS 14 Sonoma or later, so check the current one before you install.

Speechify voice typing is a free, cloud-first dictation feature inside a reading app; YapToText is a free dictation app that never uses the cloud.

What you keep, and what changes

Here is the dictation job piece by piece: what Speechify does first, then what YapToText does instead.

• Dictating into any app. Speechify's habit is holding Fn while you talk. In YapToText you tap Right Command to start and tap it again to stop, or record Fn (Globe) as the dictation key and choose Hold to talk if your hands already know the Speechify way. Intelligent Insert reads the words around your cursor first, so a sentence dropped into the middle of a paragraph gets the right capital and spacing.
• Cleanup. Speechify removes filler and fixes grammar. YapToText's Auto mode, on by default, gives most dictations a careful pass that fixes what was misheard and rewrites nothing, keeps short casual chat exactly as spoken, and turns a dictation shaped like a letter into an email. Clean Up, one keypress away, drops filler words and false starts. The cleanup model, Phi-3.5 Mini Instruct, runs on your Mac. The Auto mode guide explains how it decides.
• Your names and terms. Speechify says it learns your vocabulary on its own. YapToText's Dictionaries are something you can see and edit: each entry pairs what the app heard with the spelling you want, the entries prime the speech model before it listens, and with Suggest fixes from my dictations on, the default, words it keeps recapitalizing show up as suggestions. The Dictionaries guide shows how.
• Editing by voice. Speechify's pages do not describe rewriting a selection by voice. YapToText's Quick Edit does it in any app: select text, tap Right Option, say the change and tap again. The Quick Edit guide lists what you can ask for.

• Where your voice goes. Speechify describes cloud-based AI with an on-device model for offline use and as a fallback. YapToText has no cloud mode at all: both models run on your Mac, and the only network use is a model download you start yourself. The offline dictation guide shows how to test that with Wi-Fi off.
• Price. Both cost nothing for dictation today. The difference is the wording: Speechify says its voice typing is free for now and may change, and YapToText has no paid tier to move it into. Tips are optional and buy no features.

You give up Windows, phones, the browser and reading aloud, and you get dictation that stays on your Mac with its code in the open.

Side by side

Checked October 5, 2026, on Speechify's own pages at speechify.com. Plans change, so check before you switch.

For dictation alone, the two are closer than most comparisons: both are free today, and the real difference is where your voice is processed and what else the app does. The roundup of free dictation apps for the Mac puts more of them side by side.

Keep Speechify for listening

Reading aloud is where Speechify is strongest, and YapToText does not do it. Speechify's Mac app reads PDFs, documents and web pages, and on the Mac you can select text in any app and press Option A to have it read aloud, with the words highlighted as it goes. Its Premium plan lists more than 1,000 voices in more than 60 languages. If you listen with Speechify every day, keep it, and let a dictation app handle the writing.

The two jobs sit side by side on one Mac, as long as only one app is listening for your voice:

• Speechify reads. Select text and press Option A, as Speechify describes.
• YapToText writes. Leave its dictation key on Right Command, so it does not share Fn with Speechify's voice typing.
• Pick one for dictation. Use either Speechify's voice typing or YapToText for writing, not both, so two apps are not trying to type the same words. That is caution, not something I measured.

One honest note: I have not tested Speechify's Option A next to YapToText's Quick Edit key, Right Option. If reading aloud ever wakes Quick Edit, change the Quick Edit key on YapToText's Quick Edit page.

If you only need the occasional sentence read back, the Mac can do that by itself. Apple's Speak selection, in System Settings, Accessibility, Read & Speak, reads selected text when you press Option Esc, and Apple's Read & Speak settings can highlight words or sentences as they are spoken. It is plain next to Speechify, and Speechify's voices and file support are the reason people use it. The page on speech to text for dyslexia on a Mac walks through dictating and then hearing it back.

Move over in about ten minutes

Four steps and no account. The second is the one to watch, because macOS makes you turn on Accessibility yourself. Set Speechify's voice typing aside, grant two permissions, and your dictation runs on your own Mac.

Step 1: Install YapToText

• You: Get YapToText from the Mac App Store and open it.
• YapToText: Opens a short welcome tour. Both models are already inside the App Store version, so there is nothing else to download.
• Check: The tour's second page is titled A couple of permissions.

Step 2: Allow the microphone and Accessibility

• You: On that page, press Continue next to Microphone, then next to Accessibility.
• macOS: Asks once for the microphone, then opens System Settings, Privacy & Security, Accessibility, where you switch YapToText on yourself. An app cannot do that part for you.
• Check: Both cards read Granted. If Accessibility will not stay on, press Show in Finder in the Get set up card on the Home page, drag the app into the list, and press Recheck. Without Accessibility, every dictation goes to the clipboard instead of your cursor.

Step 3: Pick your key and dictate once

• You: Stop using Speechify's voice typing, or quit Speechify if you do not need it for reading. On the tour's Your controls page, keep Right Command, which stays clear of Speechify's Fn. If you no longer use Speechify at all and your hands learned its Fn habit, record Fn/Globe and choose Hold to talk. Then click into a text field and dictate a sentence.
• YapToText: Shows your voice as a wave and your words as they form, then types the finished text at your cursor.
• Check: The words land where your cursor was. If the wave stays flat, the app is not hearing your microphone yet.

You can change the key and how it responds later, in the Keys card on the Dictation page. The keys and shortcuts guide lists every key that can start a dictation.

Step 4: Teach it your words

Say: Select a name anywhere on screen, tap Right Option, say this, and tap Right Option again.

add this to my dictionary

What happens: The Quick Edit card says the word was added to your dictionary, and from then on YapToText spells and capitalizes it the way you selected it.

• You: Speechify learned your words on its own, so there is no list to copy over. Add the names and terms you use most on the Dictionaries page, each with what it gets heard as and the spelling you want.
• YapToText: Uses your dictionary words to prime the speech model, so it hears them as well as types them.
• Check: Dictate a sentence with one of them. It comes out spelled your way.

The first dictation guide covers the floating panel and the keys that work while you talk: Space pauses, Esc cancels and 1 to 9 pick a mode.

Which one I would pick

Both put your words at the cursor in any app, and both cost nothing for dictation today, so the choice comes down to the rest of your setup.

• You already listen with Speechify. Try its voice typing first; it is already on your Mac. If you would rather your voice stay on the Mac every time, add YapToText for writing and keep Speechify for reading.
• You only want dictation, on one Apple silicon Mac. YapToText. It does one job, on device, with no account, and the code is on GitHub for anyone to read.
• You write on a PC or a phone too. Speechify. YapToText runs only on Apple silicon Macs, and Speechify lists voice typing on Windows, iOS, Android and in browsers.
• You want to rewrite text by voice. YapToText's Quick Edit does that in any app; Speechify's pages do not describe it.

If reading aloud is the reason you have Speechify, keep it; if dictation is the reason, the free one that stays on your Mac does the job. For other dictation apps, the free Wispr Flow alternative page and the comparison page go further.

What each one cannot do

• YapToText. It does not read text aloud, at all. It runs only on Apple silicon Macs with macOS 14 or later, with no Windows, iPhone, Android or Intel version, and nothing syncs between devices. It hears 29 languages plus auto-detect; the languages guide lists them. I do not publish accuracy percentages for any model.
• Speechify. By its own description its voice typing is cloud-based AI, so offline use depends on its on-device model; Speechify's pages do not say whether every platform gets it, so test with Wi-Fi off if that matters to you. Its free voice typing is free today, and Speechify says that may change. Its pages do not say it is open source.

If you need anything Speechify does and YapToText does not, especially listening, Speechify is the better choice, and it is good software. Speechify reads to you and writes for you; YapToText only writes, and does it without leaving your Mac. The private dictation guide covers what on device means in practice.

The short version

• Does Speechify do voice typing on the Mac? Yes. Hold Fn and talk, in any app, free and unlimited today, by Speechify's own description, checked October 5, 2026.
• Where the difference is. Speechify's voice typing is cloud-based with an on-device fallback; YapToText runs on the Mac every time.
• What Speechify does better. Reading aloud, and running on Windows, phones and the browser.
• How to have both. Keep Speechify for listening, and give YapToText the writing on Right Command.

Listen with Speechify if you love it, and write with the free app that keeps your voice on your Mac.

If something here no longer matches Speechify's site, or the two apps get in each other's way on your Mac, 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

• Speech to text for dyslexia on a Mac: say it, check it, hear it back
• The best dictation software and apps for Mac in October 2026
• A free Wispr Flow alternative that stays on your Mac
• Offline dictation software for Mac, with no internet at all
• superwhisper vs Wispr Flow vs MacWhisper vs VoiceInk, plus a free one

Sources

• https://speechify.com/voice-typing-dictation/ (checked 2026-10-05)
• https://speechify.com/mac/ (checked 2026-10-05)
• https://speechify.com/news/speechify-launches-new-mac-app-with-voice-typing-dictation/ (checked 2026-10-05)
• https://speechify.com/news/speechify-voice-typing-ios-mac-launch/ (checked 2026-10-05)
• https://speechify.com/blog/why-speechify-voice-typing-is-better-than-built-in-dictation-tools/ (checked 2026-10-05)
• https://speechify.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-the-speechify-mac-app-for-text-to-speech/ (checked 2026-10-05)
• https://speechify.com/speechify-free-vs-premium/ (checked 2026-10-05)
• https://speechify.com/pricing/ (checked 2026-10-05)
• https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-read-speak-settings-for-accessibility-spch638/mac (checked 2026-10-05)
• https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yaptotext/id6786382289 (checked 2026-10-03)
• https://github.com/ryleighnewman/YapToText (checked 2026-10-03)

Questions