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Hands free typing on a Mac: the setup I use every day

By Ryleigh Newman · Published September 11, 2026 · Updated October 3, 2026

Hands free typing on a Mac works with two free tools: macOS Voice Control for clicking and moving around, and YapToText for every word you write. So yes, you can type on a Mac without using your hands, and you do not need Windows for it. My hands do not work well enough to type, and I use a Mac all day with exactly this setup.

Voice Control is part of macOS. YapToText is the dictation app I built: free, with no account, and your voice never leaves your Mac. Below is how the two split the job, the setup in about twenty minutes, and what still breaks.

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

Steps

1. Install YapToText free from the Mac App Store on an Apple silicon Mac with macOS 14 or later.
2. Allow the microphone, then switch YapToText on in System Settings, Privacy & Security, Accessibility; Voice Control can click the switch if your hands cannot.
3. On the Dictation page, pick the dictation key and choose Tap to start / stop or Hold to talk.
4. Turn on Voice Control in System Settings, Accessibility, and say Command mode so it clicks and scrolls but does not type your sentences.
5. Put the cursor where the words go, start a dictation with your key or the Start Dictation button in the menu bar panel, talk, and stop it the same way.
6. In Settings, Advanced, Text output, add the chat apps where a dictated message should send itself under After a dictation lands.

Split the job: moving and writing

The mistake I made early was trying to make one tool do both jobs. Voice Control is good at commands. Say Click and the name of a button, and it is clicked. Say Show numbers, and everything it can click gets a number you can say. Phrases like Open Mail and Scroll down do what they say. That is moving around, and it is what Voice Control is for.

Long text is a different job. What I want after the words are transcribed has nothing to do with transcription: filler removed, an email shaped like an email, the names the recognizer keeps missing spelled right, and a record I can go back to. That is why I write with YapToText. Modes decide what happens to your words, Auto mode picks the mode for you, Dictionaries fix the recognizer's misses, Quick Edit changes text that already exists, and History keeps your recent dictations with what was heard and what was delivered.

Voice Control moves and clicks; YapToText writes. My day on it looks ordinary: email, messages, and the comments in this app's own code, all dictated.

Set it up in about twenty minutes

The numbered steps near the top of this page are the whole path. Three of them can go wrong, so here is what to check for each.

Step 1: Install from the Mac App Store

• You: Install YapToText from the Mac App Store. It needs an Apple silicon Mac with macOS 14 or later.
• YapToText: Arrives with both models inside, the speech model and the cleanup model, so it can dictate from the first launch with the network off.
• Check: It opens to its welcome screen. The Homebrew build is the exception: it needs a speech model download before the first dictation, and the install guide covers it.

Step 2: Turn on Accessibility, by voice if you need to

• You: Allow the microphone when macOS asks, then press Continue next to Accessibility on the welcome screens, or Grant on YapToText's Home page.
• macOS: Sends you to System Settings, Privacy & Security, Accessibility. An app cannot switch this on for itself, so you do it: Voice Control can click the switch by name or with Show numbers, or whoever is helping you set up flips it once.
• Check: Accessibility shows as Granted on the welcome screen, and the Get set up card is gone from the Home page. Without it, every dictation is still transcribed but lands on the clipboard instead of at the cursor.

Step 5: Do your first dictation

• You: Click into a note, start a dictation with your key or the Start Dictation button, say a sentence, and stop it the same way.
• YapToText: Shows your voice as a wave and your words as they form, then types them at the cursor. The first dictation after a launch waits a moment while the model loads.
• Check: The sentence is in the note. If it is not, the first dictation guide walks through it.

One more setting changed my day: After a dictation lands, in Settings, Advanced, Text output. Add an app, choose Press Return or Press Command Return, and that key is pressed the moment your words land, so a dictated message goes out without another command. The keys and shortcuts page covers every other key the app watches.

Start a dictation without touching anything

Three ways, and none of them needs a hand on the keyboard:

• Anything that presses one key. The trigger can be any single key, not just a modifier, so a switch or a pedal that sends a key press can run it: tap once to start and once to stop, or hold to talk. I have not tested every switch interface, and the one-key dictation guide has a ten-second test for yours.
• The Start Dictation button. Clicking the capybara in the menu bar opens a small panel, and the button at the top reads Start Dictation and does the same job as the key. The menu bar page covers the rest of that panel.
• Silence. With Auto-stop after silence on, in the Recording card of the Dictation page, a dictation ends after 0.5 to 5 seconds of quiet, so you never have to stop it yourself.

Voice Control clicks controls by name, so the button gives it something to aim at:

Say: To Voice Control, with the capybara's panel open.

Click Start Dictation

What happens: Voice Control clicks the button by its name and the dictation starts, as if you had pressed the key. If it does not find the name, say Show numbers and then the button's number, or Show grid for any spot on the screen; the same two commands reach the capybara to open the panel. That is how the pieces fit together, and the Voice Control test pass has not been run.

While you record, the floating panel has pause, stop and insert, and cancel buttons, and the menu bar panel's header shows Cancel, Pause and Stop and insert, so a dictation can end from a control instead of a key. There is no wake word: a dictation starts when you start it. The microphone lets go about a second after each dictation, unless you turn on Keep the microphone warm, so nothing is listening in between.

Fix what you said, by voice

Right after a dictation lands, make your next dictation one exact phrase, within 30 seconds, and the app edits instead of typing:

Say: As the whole next dictation, right after the words land.

scratch that

What happens: The dictation you just made is taken back. replace X with Y works the same way and swaps one word or phrase in place. Only the exact whole phrase counts.

For anything bigger there is Quick Edit. Select the text, by voice with Voice Control, then tap the Quick Edit key and say the change: make this shorter, fix the grammar, translate it to Spanish, capitalize this. The rewrite replaces the selection in place. With no key at all, Regenerate in the menu bar panel rewrites selected text as any mode, or with a one-shot action such as Make Concise or Fix Grammar & Spelling. A wrong word never has to send you to the keyboard. The Quick Edit page has the list of things to say.

Auto mode helps before you say a word. Select the message you are answering, start dictating, and your reply is written to fit it. The Auto mode page explains what it reads and what it leaves alone.

Keep Voice Control from typing along

Voice Control keeps listening while YapToText records. In its Dictation mode, which is on by default, any words that are not commands are entered as text, so your sentence could be typed twice. Apple's Voice Control guide describes the two controls that keep it out of the way:

Say: To Voice Control, before you dictate with YapToText.

Command mode

What happens: Voice Control responds only to commands and ignores every other word. A sentence that sounds like a command can still be taken as one.

The tighter fence is Stop listening before a long dictation and Start listening after it. That suits a dictation you start with a key or a switch; if you start it by voice, Command mode is the fence. In Command mode, Voice Control clicks and YapToText types. I have not tried every combination, so if yours behaves differently, tell me.

If the words do not land, or the Mac beeps

Climb this ladder, smallest step first:

1. Check which window is in front. YapToText never types into its own window, so a dictation started with YapToText in front goes to the clipboard. Click into the app you meant, and Insert last, in the menu bar panel, types the last dictation there.
2. Turn on Accessibility. Without it, every dictation goes to the clipboard. The Get set up card stays on the Home page until it is on.
3. Silence the beep. Intelligent Insert reads a few words around your cursor with invisible keystrokes, so a mid-sentence dictation gets the right case and spacing, and some apps refuse one of those keystrokes, so macOS plays its alert sound. Turn Alert volume all the way down in System Settings, Sound, which silences only alert beeps, or turn Intelligent Insert off for that app in the list under its switch on the Dictation page.
4. Read the delivery outcome. History keeps where each dictation went and how it was delivered, so you can see what happened instead of guessing, and copy or insert it again.
5. Pin a method for that app. In Settings, Advanced, add the app under Per-app method and choose Type character-by-character.

Three smaller things. Since 1.5.1 the read around the cursor is skipped in Terminal, iTerm2 and the other terminals, because those keystrokes are shortcuts there. The first dictation after a launch waits for the model to load. And Quick Edit cannot read a selection in a password field. The troubleshooting guide and the Intelligent Insert page have the rest.

You do not have to switch to Windows

Every forum thread says it, and it comes from a real place. Dragon was the standard for driving a computer by voice, and Nuance discontinued Dragon Professional Individual for Mac effective October 22, 2018, with no updates after that date, according to its end-of-life notice. The usual advice is to run Windows in a virtual machine and buy Dragon for it, but Nuance's own support page says Dragon Professional is not supported in Parallels for Mac.

Even where it runs, a virtual machine means a second operating system to drive by voice inside the first, with two sets of commands and two places for focus to be. I did not want that. YapToText is free, with no paid tier and no locked features, and Voice Control is part of macOS. If you already drive one Windows program by voice all day, keeping a Windows machine for that one job is a fair choice. For writing and getting around, you can stay on the Mac. The Dragon for Mac alternative page maps each Dragon habit to its equivalent here.

If you also cannot see the screen well

The floating panel is visual, so the app also speaks to VoiceOver: Listening, Transcribing, Cleaning up, any error, and the moment the words land or the dictation is canceled, even when no app window is in front. The panel's controls are the same three everywhere: pause and resume, stop and insert, and cancel.

If the panel is more than you want, turn off Show the floating recording panel in the Pop-up card on the Dictation page. Dictation works the same, and the capybara in the menu bar still shows recording and transcribing. Play start and stop sounds, in Settings, General, adds a sound at each end. Built to work with VoiceOver describes the code; the full test pass has not been run. The accessibility hub has the rest, and if something on your setup does not work the way I have written it, I would rather hear that than anything else.

The short version

• Voice Control for moving. Clicking, scrolling and opening apps, in Command mode.
• YapToText for words. One key, a switch that presses one, or Click Start Dictation, and the text lands at the cursor.
• Fixes by voice. Scratch that, replace X with Y, Quick Edit, and Regenerate in the menu bar panel.

If a condition shapes what your hands can do, dictation for tremor, Parkinson's, MS and ALS covers what to set first, and setting up dictation for an older parent walks through doing this for someone else.

Both tools are free, and neither needs Windows. If any of this does not match what you see, tell me on GitHub. Every issue 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

• Dictate on a Mac with one key, a switch, or a pedal
• Free dictation software for disabled people on a Mac
• Voice to text on a Mac, when it has to replace the keyboard
• Dictation for tremor, Parkinson's, MS and ALS: what to set first
• Dictation vs typing speed: what the research says, and how to measure your own
• A Talon Voice alternative for Mac, and when to keep Talon
• Mac Voice Control commands: the practical list, and how to add your own
• Dictation on a Mac with VoiceOver, for blind and low vision users
• Dictation for repetitive strain injury on a Mac: fewer keystrokes, nothing held
• Edit text by voice on a Mac: fix, rewrite and delete without typing

Sources

• https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-voice-control-commands-mh40719/mac (checked 2026-10-03)
• https://support.apple.com/guide/voiceover/turn-voiceover-on-or-off-vo2682/mac (checked 2026-10-03)
• https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-dictation-mh40584/mac (checked 2026-10-03)
• https://nuance.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/27843/~/dragon-professional-for-mac-6:-end-of-life,-end-of-support-dates (checked 2026-10-03)
• https://nuance.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/29905/~/dragon-support-on-parallels-desktop-for-mac (checked 2026-10-03)

Questions