Dictation for Mac that sounds like you.
Hold a key, talk normally, and finished text appears in whatever app you are already in — punctuated, tidied, and quietly filed somewhere it can be found again.
Stilou is a Mac dictation app that turns speech into finished, punctuated text in any application. You hold a hotkey, speak at a normal pace, and release. Unlike built-in dictation, it removes filler words, matches your writing style, and saves what you said to a searchable local memory. Private mode transcribes entirely on your Mac.
What is dictation on a Mac?
Dictation is speech-to-text: you talk, and your words are typed for you. macOS has included a version of it for years, reachable by pressing the microphone key or a double-tap of a modifier, and it works reasonably well for a short sentence in a text field.
Where it falls down is real work. Built-in dictation transcribes literally — every "um", every false start, every time you changed your mind halfway through a sentence. It has no sense of where a comma goes in a long thought, and no memory of the last thing you dictated. So you speak, then spend as long editing as you would have spent typing, which is why most people try Mac dictation once and never open it again.
The newer generation of dictation tools, Stilou among them, do something different. They treat what you said as raw material rather than as output. The transcription is only the first step: the text is then cleaned, punctuated and shaped into the sentence you meant, at which point speaking genuinely becomes faster than typing rather than theoretically faster.
Stilou adds one more step that nobody else does. What you dictated does not just land in the window in front of you and disappear — it also becomes part of a searchable memory on your Mac, connected to the people and projects it mentions. The email you dictated on Tuesday is still findable in September.
How to dictate on a Mac with Stilou
Four steps, and the whole thing takes about a minute to set up.
- Install Stilou and grant microphone accessDownload the app, drag it to Applications, and open it. macOS will ask for microphone permission the first time you dictate — that is the only permission dictation needs.
- Pick your hotkeyThe default is a hold-to-talk key you can reach without looking. Any key or combination works; most people keep it on a modifier so it never collides with an app shortcut.
- Put your cursor where the text should goAnywhere that accepts typing — an email, a Slack message, a document, a code comment, a form field. Stilou types into the app you are already in rather than into a window of its own.
- Hold, speak, releaseTalk at a normal conversational pace. You do not need to say "comma" or "new paragraph", and you can change your mind mid-sentence. Release the key and the finished text appears.
Tip. You can dictate a whole paragraph in one go. Stilou handles the punctuation across the full thought, which is exactly the case where sentence-at-a-time dictation tools fall apart.
What makes it different from the dictation you already tried
Filler words never make it to the page.
The "um", the restarted sentence, the trailing "...you know what I mean" — all removed. You get the sentence you intended rather than a transcript of you finding it.
You don't have to say "comma".
Punctuation is inferred from the shape of what you said, across the whole passage rather than clause by clause. Long, complicated sentences come out as long, correctly-punctuated sentences.
It writes the way you write.
Stilou learns your patterns from your own writing, so dictated text reads like you on a good day — not like a language model doing an impression of a professional.
Any app that accepts text.
Mail, Slack, Notion, Docs, an IDE, a browser form. There is no "supported apps" list to check, because it types where your cursor already is.
Private mode needs no network.
Transcription runs on your Mac. On a plane, on hotel wifi, or with the network off entirely, dictation still works and nothing is sent anywhere.
What you said stays findable.
Every dictation becomes a dot in your local brain, linked to whoever and whatever it mentioned. This is the part that compounds — and the part no other dictation app does.
Stilou vs built-in macOS dictation
Apple's dictation is free and already on your machine, so the honest question is what you get for replacing it.
| Stilou | macOS Dictation | |
|---|---|---|
| Removes filler words | Yes — automatically | No, transcribes literally |
| Punctuation | Inferred across the whole passage | Spoken commands ("comma", "period") |
| Matches your writing style | Yes, via your Voiceprint | No |
| Works offline | Yes, in Private mode | Yes, on Apple silicon |
| Works in any app | Yes | Yes |
| Keeps what you dictated | Yes — searchable, linked | No, the text is all you get |
| Long-form accuracy | Built for paragraphs | Best for short phrases |
| Price | Free tier, paid plans for more | Free |
If you dictate a text message twice a week, macOS dictation is genuinely fine and you should keep using it. The case for replacing it starts when you are dictating paragraphs, and gets decisive when you want to find them again later.
Full comparison: Stilou vs Wispr Flow →Stilou vs Superwhisper →
Where your voice actually goes
In Private mode, nowhere. Transcription runs on your Mac against a local model, and the egress counter in the app stays at zero because there is nothing to send.
In Connected mode, audio is transcribed by a hosted model for extra accuracy and speed, and the resulting text is what gets kept — locally. Which mode you are in is visible in the interface rather than buried in a settings pane.
Either way, no recording is retained by us, your voice is never used to train a model, and the searchable index built from your dictations is a set of files on your own disk.
Frequently asked questions
Is Stilou's dictation better than Apple's built-in dictation?
For anything longer than a sentence, yes — because it does a different job. Apple's transcribes what you said; Stilou's produces what you meant, removing filler and punctuating the whole passage. For a two-word reply, the built-in one is perfectly good and already installed.
Does Mac dictation work offline?
In Stilou's Private mode, yes — transcription runs entirely on your Mac and needs no network at all. macOS built-in dictation also works offline on Apple silicon. Connected mode does use a hosted model, and you can see which mode you are in.
Which apps does it work in?
Any app on macOS that accepts typed text. Stilou types at your cursor rather than into a window of its own, so Mail, Slack, Notion, Google Docs, your editor and browser forms all work without an integration.
How accurate is it with an accent?
Well, and it improves with use as your Voiceprint builds. Accent handling is a property of the underlying speech model rather than anything Stilou-specific, and Connected mode uses the strongest available model when you want maximum accuracy.
Do I have to say punctuation out loud?
No. Punctuation is inferred from the structure of what you said. You can say "comma" if you want a comma in a specific place, but the default is that you talk normally and it works out where the sentences end.
Can I dictate in other languages?
Yes. The speech models Stilou uses are multilingual, so you can dictate in a language other than English and get text back in that language.
Is my voice recording stored anywhere?
No recording is retained. Audio becomes text and the audio is discarded — what persists is the text, on your Mac. Nothing is used to train a model.
What do I need to run it?
A Mac running a current version of macOS, and microphone permission. Local transcription in Private mode runs best on Apple silicon.