Smart dictation that never leaves your Mac.
Hold a key, speak, and watch your words appear in any app. The ums, stutters, and second thoughts are cleaned up on the way in. No internet needed.
14-day free trial · $27 once · one Mac · 30-day refund
No card and no account to try it. Signed and notarized by Apple.
You are on a phone. Slate installs on a Mac. Open slatedictation.com there and the button will be waiting.
A demonstration. While the talk key is held, a black island grows out of the notch at the top of the screen and shows the words as they are heard. One word comes out wrong and the fix is marked. The person says a filler, changes their mind about a time, asks for a new paragraph, and speaks an email address. When the key is let go, the island says "Placed in Notes" and the cleaned text appears in the note at the cursor: "Meet me at ten." then a new paragraph, "Email [email protected]."
Works in every app. MailSlackNotesSafariChromeVS CodeTerminaland every other text box
How it works
Hold a key. Talk. Let go.
That is the whole thing. It works the same in Mail, Slack, Notes, a browser, or a code editor.
Hold the talk key
Right Option, out of the box. Pick another key if you want, or set it to tap once to start and tap again to stop.
Your Mac turns it into text
The speech model runs on the Neural Engine. A short sentence comes back in well under a second.
The text lands at your cursor
Cleaned up, and fitted to the sentence you were writing. Your clipboard is put back the way you left it.
The cleanup
What Slate fixes before it types.
Each one is a fixed rule with its own switch. Your wording is never rewritten by an AI.
“Um, so the deadline, the deadline moved to Friday.”
So the deadline moved to Friday.
“I’ll see you at 10:30. Actually, I’ll see you at 11.”
I’ll see you at 11.
“Ship it Tuesday. Scratch that. Ship it Wednesday.”
Ship it Wednesday.
All of it can be switched off in Settings.
Inside the app
What else it does.
Say “new paragraph” and get one
“New line” starts a line. “Open quote” and “open bracket” wrap what comes next. “Scratch that” takes back the sentence before it.
A dictionary for names and jargon
Add what you say on one side and what should be written on the other. Islamic phrases are spelled the same way every time.
Save a thought without typing it
Hold Shift with the talk key and the words are kept instead of typed. Press ⌘ with the talk key to pick one out later, and it lands at your cursor.
“one, milk, two, eggs, three, bread”
- milk
- eggs
- bread
Dictate a list and get a list
Say the number, pause, then the item. Counting, prices, and clock times stay as ordinary sentences.
25 European languages, all on this Mac
The English model is the most accurate. The multilingual model covers 25 European languages and works out which one you are speaking.
A history you can search, or switch off
Every dictation is kept as text, on this Mac. Keep it, keep a day of it, or keep nothing. ⌘⌃V puts the last one back anywhere.
- Your clipboard is put back, images included
- Locked password boxes are never typed into
- 0% CPU while it sits idle
Leaves your clipboard alone
Whatever you copied comes back. When a password box locks the keyboard, as real ones do, Slate notices, says so, and types nothing.
The promise
Your words are never sent anywhere.
Cloud dictation apps send a recording of your voice to a server, charge every month, and stop working on a plane. Slate does the whole job here.
# nothing. keep talking, run it again, still nothing.
$
Do not take our word for it. Run Little Snitch, LuLu, or Wireshark and watch while you dictate. Or turn off Wi-Fi and keep working.
- Speech becomes text on this Mac, on the Neural Engine, using the Parakeet model. There is no server to send it to.
- No account, no sign-in, no tracking. Slate does not collect anything.
- Zero network connections while dictating. Measured with lsof during a live transcription: none.
- Works with no internet after the speech model downloads from huggingface.co, about 600 MB. Switching to the multilingual model fetches that one too. Arabic, if you turn it on, comes from slatedictation.com, about 65 MB.
- The rest of the list, in full. A license key is checked or released with the store, api.lemonsqueezy.com, only when you press Activate or Deactivate. It goes with a random tag, never your name or your Mac’s name. If you switch update checks on, Slate asks slatedictation.com whether there is a new version, and downloads it only if you choose to install it. That is all four, and none of it happens while you dictate.
The difference
Slate and cloud dictation.
| Slate | Cloud dictation apps | |
|---|---|---|
| Where speech becomes text | On your Mac | On their servers |
| How long it takes | Under a second | A round trip to their server |
| On a plane | Works | Does not work |
| Your voice | Never leaves the Mac | Uploaded |
| Account | None | Required |
| Price | $27, once | $144 a year and up |
Pricing
Free for 14 days. Then $27, once.
The trial is the whole app, with nothing held back. No card to start it, and no subscription after it.
$27 once, in US dollars
- Every feature, the same as the trial
- Slate 2 and every Slate 2 update
- One person on one Mac. Moving to a new Mac is free.
- Your money back within 30 days, no questions asked
Lemon Squeezy runs the checkout for Blue Tomato Studio LLC, and emails your receipt and license key.
Opened Slate before it cost money? It stays free for you, with nothing to do.
Get Slate.
The download is the whole app. Use it free for 14 days, with no card and no account. After that, a $27 license key keeps dictation working.
Download Slate for Mac14-day free trial · $27 once · one Mac · 30-day refund
First launch asks for two permissions, and downloads the speech model.
Microphone
Used while you hold the talk key, and at no other time.
Accessibility
Notices the talk key, and puts the text at your cursor. Every other keystroke passes through untouched.
The speech model
Downloads once, about 600 MB. After that, dictation needs no internet.
FAQ