Dictate in any app · Chat
Slack has no text dictation of its own — the microphone button records a voice clip instead. Typally puts your words into Slack the moment you release the key, in whichever field you left the cursor.
From the people who build Typally. If Slack's own option covers your use, use it — this page will tell you when it does.Slack's microphone records an audio message, sometimes with a transcript attached on paid plans. That is a different thing from dictation: your colleague gets a clip to play rather than text to skim. Plenty of people would rather read three lines than press play on a forty-second recording.
Slack rewards fast, frequent, medium-length messages — the exact shape that is slow to type and quick to say. It is also where the long explanatory message gets abandoned halfway and replaced with 'let's just call'.
In practice people use it for: Standup updates, explaining a decision to the team, answering a question properly instead of with one line, and writing the thread reply that saves a meeting.
You do not configure anything in Slack. The hotkey works wherever your cursor happens to be:
Windows or macOS build, signed in once.
The cursor position is the whole instruction — Slack routes the keystrokes from there.
Nothing truncates part-way through.
Slack sends on Enter by default, so a dictated 'new line' or a pause read as a sentence end can post a half-finished thought. Compose longer messages in a thread or change the Enter behaviour in preferences.
Typally types into whichever Slack box has focus, so the three-paragraph explanation that would otherwise become a call gets written and stays searchable. The cleanup pass removes filler, and a colleague gets text they can skim rather than a voice clip they have to press play on.
A developer is asked in a channel why the team dropped an approach. The typed answer would be one line and a shrug; the spoken answer is three paragraphs covering what was tried, why it failed and what replaced it. Six months later somebody searches the channel and finds the whole reasoning instead of a link to a meeting nobody recorded.
Use dictation for the messages you would otherwise turn into a call. A three-paragraph written explanation is searchable later; a fifteen-minute call is not.
Slack sends on Enter by default, so a dictated 'new line' or a pause read as a sentence end can post a half-finished thought. Compose longer messages in a thread or change the Enter behaviour in preferences.
Slack's microphone button records a voice clip rather than typing text into the message box. Transcripts of clips are a paid-plan feature attached to the audio, not a substitute for dictating.
Yes. A system-level dictation tool types into whichever box has focus, so threads, DMs, channel messages and the search bar all work the same way.
It can, if the tool sends a return character and your Slack is set to send on Enter. Check the tool's punctuation behaviour, or change Slack's Enter setting.
You can try this on the free plan — 100 minutes a month, no card, no trial countdown.
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