I use an M Series MacBook Air and spend all day inputting text mainly via apps in the browser (Arc & Chrome).
I’m UK based.
have tried the built in macOS dictation and it’s ok. Is it worth exploring Superwhisper or Macwhipser? Anyone have any experience?
I need as much accuracy as possible, the ability to add words from my own sector and ideally being able to use the keyboard at the same time.
I find that the voice control dictation, which is different to the standard dictation, is actually very very good. It didn’t used to be, but it has improved a lot. You can add your own vocabulary in.
Also worth bearing in mind that Whisper is definitely a transcription rather than dictation product and likes to do its own punctuation. Spoken punctuation commands (“paragraph”, “comma”) will be transcribed literally unless (I guess, theoretically, though I’ve no direct experience of this) you specifically instruct otherwise in a custom prompt which I believe is easier in Super- than Mac-whisper
You could also experiment with your input device, and local noise in your environment may play a role. I use MacOS dictation from time to time (to alleviate RSI), and accuracy little hit and miss. I have a Blue Yeti Microphone set up, and the closer I am to it, the better. My MBP is off-centre, and when the mic isn’t plugged in, I think I loose accuracy.
I also had a fling with the Whisper apps, but @Percussor is right that there is a difference between dictating straight into any text windows on your system, and what these apps seems mostly to offer, which is the processing of speech to formatted text (often ran through AI or other engines to clean things up – to my experience, not always in ways that help me). I too am wedded to saying the punctuation marks, and don’t care for anyone else to punctuate me!
MacSparky recently shared a good tip that on Sequioa, Voice Memos now has transcription abilities. I’ve used that a few times when out and about with my phone, record a note on it, and then have it transcribed at my desk on the MBP.
I am a big fan of Wispr Flow (and their privacy policy, which is HIPPA compliant — you have to select this mode). I have it on both my mac and phone and use it all the time as do several colleagues. It’s also really helpful with chatbots, I barely type at all now when using ChatGPT.
I will have a look at Wispr Flow.
To address the original question:
MacWhisper is really for transcription, not dictation. I have been using Willow app for dictation on the Mac, which is reasonably successful. I haven’t quite worked out how to deal with commands like new paragraph and open and close brackets.
( this paragraph was dictated with Willow App. ) (and the brackets added in manually)
I should have added, if I understand it correctly, Willow app works on your Mac rather than going out to the cloud.
MacWhisper has a new dictation function in beta, I only tried it out a little bit, but it seems ok.
There’s a toggle to listen for punctuation commands, so you can do things like comma, new line, etc.