Dictate in any app · Notes
Apple Notes has no dictation of its own — it borrows whatever macOS provides. With Typally you hold a hotkey, speak, and the text lands in Apple Notes exactly where your cursor was.
Disclosure: Typally is our product. We have tried to describe what Apple Notes already does without talking you out of using it.Nothing app-specific. macOS has system dictation you can switch on in Settings, and it reaches Notes like it reaches anything else. Its accuracy and punctuation handling are what they are; the app has no say in it.
Notes is the app people open when they have thirty seconds and a thought. That is precisely when typing loses — the thought arrives complete and the keyboard doles it out a word at a time.
In practice people use it for: Quick captures between meetings, shopping and packing lists, half-formed ideas, and the note that turns into a document later.
You do not configure anything in Apple Notes. The hotkey works wherever your cursor happens to be:
Windows or macOS, then sign in. No card for the free tier.
Text goes wherever Apple Notes has focus. One click first saves undoing a paragraph in the wrong box.
Say the whole thought, then let go. No time limit.
Notes autoformats lists when a line starts with a dash or a number, so a dictated 'one' or 'dash' at the start of a line can change the block type.
Typally puts a complete thought into a note in the few seconds you have, without opening anything or choosing a format. Because it types into the focused window, the same key works in Notes, Mail and your browser, so capture never depends on which app happens to be in front of you when the thought arrives.
Someone leaves a client call with four things to remember and ninety seconds before the next one. Typed, two of them get captured. Spoken into a single note, all four make it, in the client's own words, which is what makes them useful two days later.
Dictate into one long note and split it later. Deciding which note something belongs in is the friction that stops people capturing at all.
Notes autoformats lists when a line starts with a dash or a number, so a dictated 'one' or 'dash' at the start of a line can change the block type.
No. It relies on macOS system dictation, which works across all apps rather than being a Notes feature.
Notes on Windows only exists through iCloud in a browser. A system-level dictation tool types into that browser tab like any other.
Yes. The text is ordinary note content, so iCloud syncs it the same way it syncs typing.
You can try this on the free plan — 100 minutes a month, no card, no trial countdown.
Also dictate in: Apple Pages · Google Keep · Notion · Craft · Raycast · see all apps