Dictation that doesn't care which language I'm in
I think in German and I work a lot in English, often in the same hour. Every dictation tool I'd tried before handled that badly: you pick a language in a setting somewhere, and then you're stuck with it until you remember to go back and change it.
Spokenly is a small app-layer on top of current speech-to-text models. Activate it with a shortcut, and it inputs whatever you are saying into whatever text field you are currently in. With most of the model choices available, they can easily switch between the two languages - so I can really just start talking.
Running on my own machine
The transcription happens locally. No audio leaves the Mac, there's no account and subscription cost if you put it in "local only" mode.
Two or three years ago this would have been a compromise — local models were noticeably worse, and you accepted that in exchange for privacy. That gap has closed. I'm currently using Nvidia's Parakeet, which is genuinely good in both my languages, and I'm planning to try out Cohere Transcribe as an alternative. The models are small enough to run comfortably and accurate enough that I stopped thinking about accuracy.
What I actually dictate
Short messages. Faster than typing, and I'm not composing literature.
Braindumps. When a topic is tangled, I talk at it for two minutes and sort out the transcript afterwards. Speaking and writing pull different things out of my head, and this is the cheapest way I've found to use both.
Input for Claude. This one surprised me. Claude's own built-in voice transcription still struggles with my English — not the conversation mode, the dictation feature — so I use Spokenly, which handles my accent, and paste from there. A slightly absurd workaround, but it works, and I'd rather report what I actually do.
The verdict
The on-device models are free, uncapped, with no trial clock. Pro is $9.99 a month and buys you hosted cloud models, which I don't need because the local ones already do what I want.
Part of the Mac software I actually use — nineteen tools, one write-up a week. Put together with AI, based entirely on my own use and opinions.
