How to dictate into any Mac app (Slack, VS Code, Mail)

Dictating into any Mac app comes down to one thing: a tool that listens for a key anywhere in macOS and pastes text wherever your cursor is. Apple's built-in Dictation does this out of the box, and how to dictate on a Mac covers it. This guide sets up Gabble, which adds formatting that changes with the app you are in.

How do you set it up?

Setup is one download, two permissions and one model.

Download Gabble and open it. It needs an Apple Silicon Mac on macOS 14 or later. There is no account.
Allow Microphone access when macOS asks.
Allow Accessibility access in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility.
Wait for the default speech model, Parakeet v3, to download. It is about 480 MB.
Click into any text field, hold Right Option, and speak.
Release the key. The text is pasted at your cursor.

Why does it need two permissions?

It needs Microphone to hear you and Accessibility to act outside its own window. macOS will not let an app see a key press while another app is in front, or paste into another app, without Accessibility permission. Gabble uses it for exactly those two things: watching for the dictation key, and pasting.

The audio is transcribed on your Mac. It is held in memory, never written to disk and never uploaded.

How do the keys work?

There is one dictation key and four things you can do with it.

Action	What happens
Hold the key, speak, release	Text is pasted into the app in front
Tap the key quickly	Hands-free recording starts. Tap again to finish
Press Esc	The recording is cancelled and nothing is pasted
Hold Shift with the key	Command mode: your spoken instruction rewrites the selected text

The key is Right Option by default. If that clashes with something, you can switch to Right Command, Right Control or Fn in Settings.

One thing to expect: the text appears after you stop speaking. Gabble does not stream words onto the screen while you talk.

How does it format differently for Slack, Mail and VS Code?

Per-app rules pick a mode for you based on which app is in front. A mode decides how your speech is turned into text.

App in front	Default mode	What the mode is for
Mail	Email	A clear email body in short paragraphs
Slack, Messages	Message	Short and casual, for chat
Xcode, VS Code, Terminal	Developer	Prompts, commit messages and comments
Notes	Notes	Bullet points from a stream of thought
Anything else	Clean	Ums and repeated words removed, capitals and spacing fixed

There is a catch you should know about. Email, Message, Developer and Notes are AI modes, and AI cleanup is off by default. Until you turn it on, those modes fall back to the on-device Clean mode. So on day one every app gets Clean, which is still a tidy transcript without the ums.

To get the per-app rewriting, turn on AI cleanup in the Modes tab and choose a provider. You can run it on your own Mac with Ollama, or use your own Anthropic or OpenAI-compatible API key. Only the transcript text is sent to the provider, never audio. Clean up dictation with a local LLM walks through the Ollama route.

What about Notion and other apps that are not on the list?

They work, and they use your default mode. Dictation into Notion, a browser, Obsidian or anything else is the same hold-and-release. Gabble pastes into whatever is in front.

To give an unlisted app its own mode:

Open the Modes tab.
Add a rule for the app.
Choose the mode it should use.

You can also change the existing rules. If you would rather have plain transcripts in Slack, point Slack at Clean or Verbatim. Verbatim leaves everything in, exactly as you said it.

You can write your own modes too. A custom mode is a name plus a prompt that tells the AI how to rewrite the transcript. That is useful for something like a meeting-notes format in Notion or a pull request description in a browser.

How do you add structure while speaking?

You say the structure out loud. Gabble recognises these spoken commands:

"new line"
"new paragraph"
"bullet point"
"open quote" and "close quote"
"open paren" and "close paren"

For blocks of text you type often, use the Snippets tab. You set a trigger phrase and the text it expands to, then say the trigger while dictating. An address, a sign-off or a standard reply are good candidates.

How do you fix text after dictating it?

Select it and use command mode. Hold Shift together with the dictation key, say an instruction such as "make this shorter", and release. The selected text is rewritten in place. Command mode needs AI cleanup turned on.

What if it does not paste?

Check Accessibility first. Without that permission Gabble cannot paste for you, so it copies the text to the clipboard and tells you to allow Accessibility. Enable Gabble under System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility. If nothing is heard at all, check the Microphone permission in the same place.

Your dictations are also kept in the History tab, which is searchable, so you can copy a transcript from there if a paste went to the wrong window. You control retention: forever, 30 days, 7 days, or don't save.

If you write code or prompts by voice, continue with voice coding on Mac.

Frequently asked questions

How do I dictate into Slack on a Mac?

Click into the Slack message box, hold the dictation key, speak, and release. Gabble pastes the text into Slack and uses its Message mode there by default.

Can I dictate into VS Code?

Yes. Gabble pastes into whichever app is in front, including VS Code, Xcode and Terminal. Those three use Developer mode by default.

Why does a dictation app need Accessibility permission?

macOS requires Accessibility permission for an app to notice a global key press and to paste into other apps. Gabble uses it for those two things.

Does dictation overwrite my clipboard?

Gabble pastes through the clipboard and then restores what was on it before, so your last copied item is still there.

Can I use different writing styles in different apps?

Yes. Gabble has per-app rules in the Modes tab. Each rule maps an app to a mode, and you can edit or add rules.

Does dictation work in Notion?

Yes. Gabble pastes into the app in front, so it works in Notion like any other app. Notion has no default rule, so it uses your default mode unless you add a rule for it.