I went looking for a free dictation tool for Mac after my Wispr Flow trial ended. What I found was not great.
There were browser-based speech-to-text pages where you talk into a website and then copy the result out. Desktop tools that cap how much you can use before asking for a credit card. Roundup articles that mix transcription services with actual dictation tools like they are the same thing.
None of them solved the thing I actually wanted: keep typing in the app I am in, but with my voice instead of my keyboard.
So I built one
Codictate is a free dictation tool for Mac and MacBook. You press Option+Space, speak, and the text lands where your cursor already is. Your IDE, terminal, Slack, Mail, Notes, browser, wherever. No tab switching, no paste step.
It runs locally on Apple Silicon using AI models (Parakeet TDT v3 or Whisper) so your audio never leaves your machine. And it is open source, Apache 2.0, source on GitHub.
The feature that surprised me the most
I expected the transcription quality to be the main selling point. And it is good. But the feature I actually use the most is the dictionary.
You can teach Codictate how to spell things it gets wrong. Two modes:
Fuzzy terms. Add a word like "Electrobun" and Codictate will automatically correct anything close enough, like "Electrobon" or "electro bun." It uses fuzzy matching, so you do not need to anticipate every possible mishearing.
Exact replacements. Map a specific phrase to something else. "BTW" always becomes "by the way." "CDT" always becomes "Codictate." Whatever shortcuts make sense for how you talk.
And the best part: auto-learn. Turn it on and Codictate watches what you correct after dictating. If you keep fixing the same word, it learns the replacement on its own. Over time it just gets better at understanding you, without you doing anything.
Not "free trial." Free.
There is no usage cap. No account. No feature gate that unlocks after you pay. Codictate is free because I think dictation should be something your computer just does, not something you rent.
If you want the full walkthrough for getting started, read How To Use Dictation on Your Mac. If you are coming from Wispr Flow specifically, that comparison is here.