Dictation app that inserts text in real time?

Dictated by apple?

The only one I've ever seen do this is the built in Apple dictation utility. Many will show the live dictation in a small window on the screen (i.e. Aquavoice) but I have yet to encounter one that will dictate directly into text insertion.

Just curious. I’m okay with not seeing the dictated text until I release a button, using Wispr Flow. Why do you want to see the text in real time? I would find that distracting for my own flow.

why do u prefer direct trainsribe over the "box"

Why dont you play an audio or smth or turn ON dictation for a couple hours and see if it dictates it? :) use the biggest Overlay and you can see a lot of content on the box! FWIW, I do have a prototype to dictate directly into apps but it’s very hard to perfect it. Maybe I should make an alpha version of that if people are really into it. But no guarantees it will give same experience as the box and smoothness haha.

I’m the indie dev of a Mac dictation app, so I’m biased, but I’ve been down this rabbit hole quite a bit and can share what I know. You're looking at a ton of system‑wide dictation tools that hook into the current text field rather than showing their own box. These work by watching the focused app and injecting keystrokes so if your cursor is in Word you get live text appearing in the document, very similar to Dragon’s old dictation box off mode. The trade‑off is that nearly all of the polished ones are paid and not FOSS. On the FOSS side, most of the Whisper‑based apps on Mac, like MacWhisper and friends, are geared around file transcription or speak, then insert workflows rather than true live text into Word. Since I built one of these tools myself, here’s what it does and doesn’t do so you can see if it’s even in the right category. My app is called Parakeety, it’s a local push‑to‑talk dictation menu bar app for Apple Silicon Macs on macOS 14+. You hold a key, speak, and as soon as you release, your text pastes at the cursor in whatever app is focused, including Word, Pages, Notes, browsers, terminals, etc. It runs Nvidia’s Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 model entirely on the Apple Neural Engine so no audio or text ever leaves the machine, there are no accounts, no telemetry, and no history or logs kept. Audio only lives in memory while you’re holding the key then it’s transcribed and discarded. The downside for your use case is that it’s press‑to‑talk, then paste rather than streaming character‑by‑character while you speak so if you truly need continuous live text (for example watching the sentence form in real time while talking) that’s a limitation by design. If holding a key for each sentence or phrase and having it appear in place is acceptable then it may be close enough to what you want, but it’s not FOSS. Given how specific your requirements are, I’d decide whether FOSS or Dragon‑style live insertion matters more and choose based on that because getting all three at once on Mac in a polished package is pretty rare right now.

Real-time streaming with local FOSS is a hard ask. Whisper-style models process audio in chunks, so there's always some lag, and most open-source options are record-then-transcribe-then-paste rather than streaming. macOS's built-in Dictation is actually the closest match to what you described. Streams insert as you talk, local on Apple Silicon since macOS 14. Accuracy isn't amazing but the UX is exactly what you want. For better quality, MacWhisper has a Live Mode that streams. Paid though. And whisper.cpp itself is FOSS with streaming examples in the repo if you want to wire something yourself. If "tap a key, talk, release types it out" works for you (not exactly real-time but close), Whispering on github (braden-w/whispering) is FOSS, local, Whisper-based.

Please update here if you find anything like this. Been looking for something like this for a long time

Try Soink! It does the same as apple dictation!

Real-time dictation on Mac is great until you realize it's just live-streaming your brain's chaotic buffering process. It's like hiring a professional translator who faithfully shouts your every stutter, clearing of the throat, and mid-thought crisis to the entire room. If you use native tools, try mapping out your exact phrase mentally before speaking to avoid the messy cleanup. I'm actually building a Mac voice app that filters out that verbal garbage while streaming clean text in real-time.Real-time dictation on Mac is great until you realize it's just live-streaming your brain's chaotic buffering process. It's like hiring a professional translator who faithfully shouts your every stutter, clearing of the throat, and mid-thought crisis to the entire room. If you use native tools, try mapping out your exact phrase mentally before speaking to avoid the messy cleanup. I'm actually building a Mac voice app that filters out that verbal garbage while streaming clean text in real-time.

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I just saw https://snaply.ai in this subreddit and it's free, works great.

Hey I built Codictate. It's free and runs 100% locally. Here is a short demo of the stream mode before you decide: https://youtu.be/ZEdrjlO4eA8?t=155

Handy? https://handy.computer

shameless plug, yakki.ai It does it all and works super good, dm me and I'll send you a code for using it a few months for free 😄

Nice 5-letter .ai domain. Little feedback: The animation on the /about page is too fast to read what Yak and Key means.

dictop might be worth trying. It is not FOSS, but it can run local-only/on-device, and the Mac app is distributed through the App Store with a one-time purchase (Disclosure: we make dictop). It has a continuous dictation mode that is closer to what you are describing than the usual "record a long chunk, then paste it later" workflow. It keeps listening, and when it detects a silence it transcribes the previous chunk and inserts it where the cursor is. You can tune the silence timing/sensitivity, so it can behave more like paragraph-by-paragraph dictation without forcing you to manually stop and start every time. Very tiny chunks can be less accurate, but waiting ten minutes before anything appears is also awkward. Silence-based chunks are a reasonable middle ground. The useful detail is that transcription/insertion does not have to block the next recording chunk. You can keep dictating while the previous audio is being processed. For Word specifically, direct insertion is probably fine because editing after the fact is easy. For terminals, chat inputs, browser fields, or AI tools, I would actually want an edit-before-paste option, because one bad paste or accidental Enter can be painful. Dictop supports that too, so you can choose based on the target app rather than being locked into one workflow. For the "my dictation disappeared" problem, the useful detail is that there is a retry-last-audio option. If the transcription step fails, it obviously cannot save a finished transcript to history, but you should not have to record the same paragraph again just because one transcription attempt failed. So the short version is: not FOSS, sadly, but local-only/on-device is supported, continuous mode sounds relevant to your Word use case, and the App Store / one-time-purchase model may also matter if you prefer not to manage another direct software subscription. for a dictation app with broad permissions.

Dragon is a good reference point here, because what made it useful was not only dictation. It was the combination of dictation + voice commands, so you could stay in the document instead of constantly switching modes. Dopdock is closer to that direction than a plain dictation box. It can insert dictated text where the cursor is, and it also has voice commands / automation, so the workflow feels more like "talk to the Mac while staying in Word" rather than "dictate into another window, then paste." (Disclosure: we make Dopdock) For your local-only requirement: it can use Whisper locally on the Mac. You can use your own API key for cloud models / custom providers, but you do not have to. Not FOSS, so it may not match that preference, but if what you miss from Dragon is the direct writing + command layer, it is probably worth checking: https://dopdock.com