Documentation
Welcome to Dictato
Context-aware voice dictation for macOS
Dictato is a local, privacy-friendly dictation app for macOS. Hold Fn to dictate, release to paste — but Dictato also lets you attach screenshots, drawings, and quoted text to the same dictation so you can talk about what's on screen.
Quick start
Install Dictato and record your first dictation.
Dictation
Push-to-talk, hands-free lock, and stopping a session.
Tools
Screenshots, drawings, text quotes, and drag-and-drop attachments.
Post-processing
Clean up transcriptions with on-device or Claude AI.
Why Dictato?
- Local first. Transcription runs on-device with Parakeet or WhisperKit. Nothing leaves your Mac unless you enable cloud post-processing.
- More than speech. Combine voice with screenshots, drawings, and quoted text in a single dictation.
- Context-aware. Optionally attach on-screen text, the active app, and your recent selection to every transcription.
- Scriptable. Hooks let you run shell commands, webhooks, or Claude prompts on events like
BeforePasteorTranscriptionComplete.
Tip
Dictato is built for longer, richer dictations — not just one-shot voice-to-text. Try locking the recording with Fn + Space and circling things on screen.