I type on a keyboard on my Mac all day, either on a desk, table or lapdesk. Often I want to write but not like that. Sometimes I want to capture a thought while walking the dog or shopping or running errands. Alternatives:
Thumb-typing: Slow, error-prone.
Voice dictation. Everybody slags on Siri, but I think it’s pretty good. Are there better options? If so, what are they?
Maybe I just want to get better at handwriting in a notebook and then I scan it in or retype it. But I am rubbish at organizing my notes after I’ve captured them and I fear a notebook would fill up with writing I never look at again.
Oh, you could just copy the text it comes out with, and not hit send. I like that if I record something the dictation is usually better than apple’s by a long shot. And it saves it for later.
Also, I can also ask it to help me untangle my thoughts. I sometime speak in “Chinglish” - see my last name, haha, and it seems better at interpreting my words than I do.
I finally bit the bullet after hearing David talk about it, and subscribed to Whisper Memos. I had hacked together a few workflows of my own with Shortcuts (and Just Press Record), but they weren’t as smooth and seamless, especially on the Apple Watch. Now I just tap and talk, and, if I use one trigger word or another, can have the text show up in personal email, work email, or Things. I also created a shortcut so that when I use Wispr Flow via an icon on my phone, it adds a transcription of my dictation to my clipboard manager for later use.
I do have a bit of a problem with text apps, though, and also occasionally put things in Drafts. I bounce between Tot and Five Notes for transient notes.
This is very specific to the hardware, but I use the Action button on my Ultra 2 to either create a new item in Notes Drafts or add to an existing pinned note, depending on the context of the note. This propagates almost at once to all my devices. I usually use voice recognition which the watch does pretty well in most situations.
If the note is just sentence and I want to remember it soon I have Siri create a reminder and dictate the contents on the Watch too.
Edit: sorry, I wrote Notes and meant Drafts; I changed to Drafts a few months ago.
I love Drafts. Best dictation and with their Actions, you can act on your text easily. Send it to an email, message–almost any place you want.
Agile Tortoise is a great developer and constantly adds functionality. There is a vibrant community that creates Actions any one can easily download and add to their list.
Best, GM
For parts of essays/documents, I write in brief bullets, short enough that thumb entry isn’t an issue. This works for me because my longform writing style is to expand an outline.
Drafts dictation and Siri “Remind me to…” works well enough when I don’t already have a document or I just want to capture the start of an idea.
Disclaimer: I don’t write enough words to find these methods limiting. I’m not a professional writer.
I used to be an immense fan of Dragon Dictate given the ability to not only dictate but also edit by voice. I was quite disappointed when they ended Mac support. It runs on Paralllels but I don’t want to run 2 operating systems for such a key workflow item.
I recently found Talon Voice. It is open source software with strong community support. You can use it not only for dictation but also for any sort of voice automation you can dream up.
At one point I thought it was a great idea but took a lot of effort to configure. Recently I tried it with Claude Cowork, which has done a masterful job creating custom voice commands including a dictation workflow for me.
I use voice memos and then extract the transcription. It’s great. Otherwise, if I’m typing it’s in an e-mail, Apple Notes, or Scrivener. I have my action button set up to record voice memos, and a complication on my AW Ultra.
I’m looking forward to trying the improved dictation on iOS 27, but for now Apple dictation has been working mostly well enough.
I’ve read others saying that they use chatgpt’s dictation, but for some reason it’s been horrible for me. I’ll sometimes dictate in a note and then copy/paste to chatgpt. (Assuming they are referring to dictation to text vs. voice+audio response. My experience with voice dictation with audio response has been fine. But I don’t use it much.)
I dictate or record medical appointments in Memo AI or write notes in my Remarkable Paper Pro Move, which is part of my daily carry, and they sync across all of my devices. I don’t feel the need to use text conversion, but I am glad that it is available.
I keep a Logitech Pebble bluetooth keyboard in my messenger bag along with an iPhone kickstand. Pages is not my favorite word processor, but on the go it’s not half bad.
In days of yore I always had an Alphasmart Neo with me, which was an amazing machine.
Now, when the mood strikes me to write with a dedicated writing gizmo, I have a BYOK.
It has some advantages over the old Neo, because it will mount as a USB drive. Documents are easy to copy to or from the device, and if I want I can work on a document on the BYOK with ia Writer or whatever plain text editor I want.
And, of course, on the go I always carry a fountain pen and a Lochby field notebook. My inner Indiana Jones has requirements.
Currently, a small 3 x5 notebook with space pen I carry in my wallet in a belt pouch along with my leatherman multitool on the other side to balance it. That is my primary method of capture. I tear off each page,tuff it in my right hand pants pocket and as soon as I come back inside all my notes get dropped on my keyboard. I have to deal with them or I can’t do anything else.
I am currently exploring and configuring SuperWhisper by making blog mode, farm mode and other special sets of stuff that handle the differing ways I want my vocal data to be transcribed (ewe vs you). It’s still a work in progress but looks to be more flexible than other options. Siri and I never worked well although changing the output voice to UK male made it far more accurate with my inputs compared to the other options.
Another vote for Drafts, both for typing and dictation when I’m away from my desk. It syncs on all my devices and I can shoot what I’ve written or dictated directly to the app where it needs to go.