Apple speech-to-text
Shares rank 20 of 26 dictation apps by recommenders
Free built-in dictation that many find fast and accurate, though critics call it unreliable, weaker than Whisper-based tools, and poor at switching languages.
Free built-in dictation that many find fast and accurate, though critics call it unreliable, weaker than Whisper-based tools, and poor at switching languages.
13 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 46%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Accurate, often better than Whisper
“which I found out to be better performing for me than the parakeet/whisper”
Comment from 24 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: What's the current best local/open speech-to-speech setup?” “i do find apple's speech to text very good lately”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor” “the speech to text is significantly better”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27” Fast, OS-level input
“apple's is 5x faster than `large-v3-turbo` with whisper.cpp and in my test had somewhat worse performance”
Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “We turned EmbeddingGemma 2 into a speech-to-text model” “an ideal OS level API making the input experience >perfect”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Ghost Pepper – 100% local hold-to-talk speech-to-text for macOS”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Frustrating, unreliable, often awful
“Apple's refusal to offer a better, more accessible experience to their users is frustrating”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: RunAnwhere – Faster AI Inference on Apple Silicon” “It sucks enough to give me a headache worrying about its unreliability”
Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “We turned EmbeddingGemma 2 into a speech-to-text model” “And then I'll switch to Apple's voice to text which is equally awful.”
Comment from 6 Aug 2026 in “I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux” - Comment from 19 May 2026 in “New accessibility features powered by Apple Intelligence”
- Comment from 19 May 2026 in “New accessibility features powered by Apple Intelligence”
Other dictation apps people recommend
The four most recommended other dictation apps, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Handy | 150 | 20 | 88% | 12 | 1 mo5 owners | Approved |
| Wispr Flow | 52 | 33 | 61% | 12 | — | — |
| MacWhisper | 31 | 9 | 78% | 12 | — | Approved |
| macOS Dictation | 26 | 44 | 37% | 10 | — | — |
| Apple speech-to-textThis page | 6 | 7 | 46% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
All 13 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It sucks enough to give me a headache worrying about its unreliability”
“apple's is 5x faster than `large-v3-turbo` with whisper.cpp and in my test had somewhat worse performance”
“which is amazing, even with background noise”
“the speech to text is significantly better”
“And then I'll switch to Apple's voice to text which is equally awful.”
“i do find apple's speech to text very good lately”
“the state of Apple speech transcription is pretty horrible”
“Apple STT is so frustrating.”
“they do not detect languages automatically, nor switch if you do between sentences”
“an ideal OS level API making the input experience >perfect”
“they just don't use a decent model yet”
“Apple's refusal to offer a better, more accessible experience to their users is frustrating”
“which I found out to be better performing for me than the parakeet/whisper”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.