alternative to Dragon Dictate for Mac

[Karen P]

I currently use Dragon Dictate for Mac, but this is now a defunct product and as far as I know there is no replacement.
I'm running High Sierra 10.13.6 on a 2017 iMac. I am reluctant to upgrade to a new OS until I have find an alternative that works for me.
It doesn't seem like the built in dictation function is very robust in comparison with Dragon. I has a time or word limit on it, for one, which is frustrating. I use Dragon, not out of convenience, but because I have a chronic arm injury and I literally cannot write paragraph upon paragraph without the use of dictation.

Are there any alternatives or recommendations?

Thanks!

 

[chscag]

We have been asked this before and unfortunately as far as we know, there is no replacement for Dragon Dictate for the Mac.

Perhaps someone will come up with something in the future but for now, you need to stick with what you have if possible.

 

[pm-r]

I have a chronic arm injury and I literally cannot write paragraph upon paragraph without the use of dictation.

Are there any alternatives or recommendations?

I am in a similar situation to you as a result of psoriasis rheumatic arthritis and gout in my hands and Dragon Dictate for the Mac went kaput when my condition became serious, so I don't even have it to use.

I prefer to use Mavericks, 10.9.5 which has the original Mac OS dictation which has a lot to be desired, and I haven't noticed any huge Improvement in later macOS versions when I have had a chance to use it.

What I have found that works quite well for good accurate dictation are some extensions and applications but they only work in Google Chrome type software.
The Google Chrome extension that works very well for me is Voice in Voice Typing, but I also use its Developer's Dictanote software Dictanote - Make your voice type for you which you can use with a browser to type into and then copy and paste into any application. Short of a fudge workaround but it does work and certainly can save one's hands and any other injured body parts, and is certainly more accurate than Apple's dictation.

I also have added Voice In Voice Plus which provides some additional features that I believe cost $25 us for Lifetime use and upgrades. One has to search out that feature to get that price.

I see that some places still sell Dragon Dictate for the Mac, but I sure didn't feel like spending $300 usd for a discontinued and unsupported software.

I wish Apple would get busy improving their dictation software and include older Mac OS versions but I know that's never going to happen...

I hope these suggestions will help your situation.


- Patrick
=======

 

[Karen P]

We have been asked this before and unfortunately as far as we know, there is no replacement for Dragon Dictate for the Mac.

Perhaps someone will come up with something in the future but for now, you need to stick with what you have if possible.

Thank you. I did a little research and it looks like my only other option is to use Dragon Naturally Speaking through Parrallels. There seems to be a glitch in using parallels in the upcoming OS 12, but by the time I actually upgrade, I'm sure that that one will be worked out.

I am a little concerned that I will only be able to use Dragon to dictate within text edit if I use it through parallels, rather than being able to use it as I do now in discord, Facebook, pages, etc. It's not the biggest loss in the world in order to continue to use the software, but it does make it less convenient. I am assuming this to be the case, if anyone knows differently, please let me know.

 

[Karen P]

I am in a similar situation to you as a result of psoriasis rheumatic arthritis and gout in my hands and Dragon Dictate for the Mac went kaput when my condition became serious, so I don't even have it to use.

I prefer to use Mavericks, 10.9.5 which has the original Mac OS dictation which has a lot to be desired, and I haven't noticed any huge Improvement in later macOS versions when I have had a chance to use it.

What I have found that works quite well for good accurate dictation are some extensions and applications but they only work in Google Chrome type software.
The Google Chrome extension that works very well for me is Voice in Voice Typing, but I also use its Developer's Dictanote software Dictanote - Make your voice type for you which you can use with a browser to type into and then copy and paste into any application. Short of a fudge workaround but it does work and certainly can save one's hands and any other injured body parts, and is certainly more accurate than Apple's dictation.

I also have added Voice In Voice Plus which provides some additional features that I believe cost $25 us for Lifetime use and upgrades. One has to search out that feature to get that price.

I see that some places still sell Dragon Dictate for the Mac, but I sure didn't feel like spending $300 usd for a discontinued and unsupported software.

I wish Apple would get busy improving their dictation software and include older Mac OS versions but I know that's never going to happen...

I hope these suggestions will help your situation.


- Patrick
=======

Thank you, Patrick. These are suggestions I did not know about, so they may certainly be helpful if I decide to check them out. I did watch a video that made me feel a lot better about using parallels and going to the Windows version of Dragon. It's below, if you'd like to check it out. Dragon is by far the most superior dictation software out there and unfortunately, Apple will never really catch up with them. They need to work with them to devise a native product rather than trying to improve their own technology. Nuance bought up all of the original dictation softwares, so they are at least a decade beyond anybody else in capabilities and cornered the market and then dropped part of that market.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

I am the head of a huge Mac user group for attorneys. Attorneys often prefer to be able to dictate their work. The loss of Dragon for the Mac has been a huge loss to them.

Dragon bought up all of their competitors, and then discontinued their products. So there are no competing products, and there aren't going to be, because Dragon owns all of the patents related to the technology to do voice recognition/transcription. Even Apple's built-in voice recognition is licensed from Dragon. That includes Siri!

(If you think that the above situation is glum, consider that Microsoft just purchased Nuance, the folks who own Dragon. So one wonders what this means for the future of Siri.)

Microsoft buys AI speech tech company Nuance for $19.7 billion

Microsoft is getting AI speech tools and a strong presence in healthcare

www.theverge.com

Your only serious option is to run Dragon via Parallels. There are other lesser alternatives, but they are quite a bit inferior, and ironically they still use Dragon software as a base.

Here is a comprehensive article on the topic:

11 Best Dictation Software For Mac of 2025 (Free & Paid)

Why spend hours typing on your Mac when you can dictate text in less than half the time? Speech recognition technology can save you time, money and stress

machow2.com

 

[IWT]

@Karen P

I read about the shortcomings of your Mac's internal dictation; but I wonder if you have tried "Enhanced Dictation" which, fortunately is still part of the High Sierra OS? (Got lost later on, I think).

It can be turned on in System Preferences > Keyboard > "Use Enhanced Dictation".

The advantage, if it is so, is that it allows offline use by downloading the dictation software or database.

This requires 422 MB of disk space, but means that you don't get time-limited dictation or gaps and delays in your dictation.

Worth a try?

Ian

 

[pm-r]

Dragon bought up all of their competitors, and then discontinued their products. So there are no competing products, and there aren't going to be, because Dragon owns all of the patents related to the technology to do voice recognition/transcription. Even Apple's built-in voice recognition is licensed from Dragon.

I sure didn't know that about Apple's dictation that they licensed it from Nuance, and I think they got ripped off as Google's voice translation engine or whatever it is they use seems to be far superior. Unfortunately, it is restricted in its general application use for Mac users.

That is an interesting comment in that article:

In macOS Big Sur and Catalina, Enhanced Dictation has been removed by default because anything you dictate is now translated by Siri.

Siri is far more accurate than the old Enhanced Dictation engine in macOS and even allows you to dictate offline in macOS Big Sur & Catalina.

Not too encouraging for some of us with older machines that cannot update to the more recent OSs and the improvements with Siri. I'll have to try it one of these days if I come across a machine I could try if they are running Big Sur or Catalina.

Otherwise not really too encouraging for users wanting to use Voice Dictation on their older Macs it seems.

Most of this was composed using Voice In Voice Google Chrome extension, so it doesn't do too badly. Apple's Dictation becomes annoying in what it produces for what it thinks you said, and that is in the enhanced mode.

PS: can anyone explain why Apple's Dictation using its enhanced mode now takes up to 20 to 30 seconds to completely load since I installed the OWC SSD a few weeks ago. It used to take about 5 to 10 seconds absolutely maximum, with the old HDD spinner. It just seems rather odd to me that it would take so much longer with the replacement SSD.


- Patrick
=======

 

[Karen P]

@Karen P

I read about the shortcomings of your Mac's internal dictation; but I wonder if you have tried "Enhanced Dictation" which, fortunately is still part of the High Sierra OS? (Got lost later on, I think).

It can be turned on in System Preferences > Keyboard > "Use Enhanced Dictation".

The advantage, if it is so, is that it allows offline use by downloading the dictation software or database.

This requires 422 MB of disk space, but means that you don't get time-limited dictation or gaps and delays in your dictation.

Worth a try?

Ian

Thank you - that one is worth a try on iPad if it's on there cause I get really bad results with iPad like huge delays or as soon as I start to speak, the dictation turns off.

 

[chscag]

Not available for iOS as far as we know. You won't be able to use it with your iPad or iPhone.

 

[IWT]

Sorry, Karen. I thought your problem was to do with Macs. Or so your header and first post suggested. It's certainly true that, as our Admin chscag said, not available on iDevices.

Ian

 

[pm-r]

@ian

It can be turned on in System Preferences > Keyboard > "Use Enhanced Dictation".

The advantage, if it is so, is that it allows offline use by downloading the dictation software or database.

This requires 422 MB of disk space, but means that you don't get time-limited dictation or gaps and delays in your dictation.

Ian, just for the record, and for those who might be having to use tiny hard drives, Apple's Enhanced Dictation download takes up nearly 800 MD (786mb) drive space, and only God knows why it needs to be downloaded each time after a reboot or cold boot, even if one has left the option checked.

But my understanding is that Apple dropped even it's Enhanced Dictation in Catalina and later and has now switched to using Seri.

Dictation changes in Catalina – for the worse?

Mojave’s effective Enhanced Dictation is gone in Catalina, replaced by Voice Control. In some ways that’s better, but not for dictation.

eclecticlight.co

It certainly sounds like Apple's taking several steps backwards as far as dictation goes:

Apple’s goal in Catalina has been to address that gap, but in doing so it is dictation which has suffered. The old Dictation tab is still in the Keyboard pane, but Enhanced Dictation has been removed. This means it lacks all the useful formatting commands, like ‘new paragraph’, and will turn itself off after a few moments without speech input. For someone used to Enhanced Dictation, this is very poor indeed.

At least it still works in Mavericks 10.9.5 that I tend to prefer using.

As far as Nuance's DRAGON FOR MAC US ENGLISH that some places are still selling and I was considering of maybe purchasing even if it is no longer supported, I don't think I shall bother after reading several reviews and reports that their last Mac versions were/are apparently absolutely atrocious and almost basically useless as Mac dictation software goes.

It is really unfortunate that Apple dropped the ball with dictation years ago and they certainly don't seem to be interested in improving it, even with their last macOS versions.


- Patrick
=======

 

[IWT]

Hi Patrick,

You may well be right as I've never dowloaded the Enhanced Dictation; but on my older iMac running High Sierra (same as the OP), it specifically says in System Preferences > KB > Use Enhanced Dictation that the download is 422MB.

Now, as I've admitted, I have never downloaded this and it may be that there is loads more bits & pieces; but 786MB is a lot more than 422MB.

Thank you for your input which has the advantage over mine that you have actually tried it!

Good on you.

Ian

 

[pm-r]

Now, as I've admitted, I have never downloaded this and it may be that there is loads more bits & pieces; but 786MB is a lot more than 422MB.

I cannot find the url that included the information for the size of the Mac enhanced dictation package, but it definitely stated it was about 20 MB less than 800MB, I genuinely like to round things out, but it seems that that figure was quite small compared to what actually gets downloaded and how about:
How to Remove the Enhanced Dictation 1.2GB Pack from Mac
now that is a pretty healthy big hunk of data!!!

Dictation on the Mac is fantastic, and if you have chosen to use Enhanced Dictation then you’ve downloaded a 1.2GB voice recognition pack to your Mac locally so that it can improve the overall functionality of the feature. That’s fine and dandy, but at some point if you decide you no longer need the Enhanced Dictation feature, you might want to reclaim that 1.2GB of disk space.

We’ll show you how to remove the Enhanced Dictation voice recognition pack and reclaim the 1.2GB of disk space from a Mac.

How to Remove the Enhanced Dictation 1.2GB Pack from Mac

Dictation on the Mac is fantastic, and if you have chosen to use Enhanced Dictation then you’ve downloaded a 1.2GB voice recognition pack to your Mac locally so that it can improve the overal…

osxdaily.com

Yikes that's not just small peanuts... especially for someone using a small Drive.
And I still cannot understand why it would take so much longer to download the file with the solid state drive I installed compared to the original Seagate spinner drive that it replaced as I mentioned in my post #8 above.

Maybe Apple made the enhanced dictation package file much bigger recently??? But it still doesn't work much better than it did.

So far my Google Chrome voice in voice extension works way better than Apple's dictation. I haven't bothered trying to use the non-enhanced version, and I think it would drive me crazy with its short bursts of dubious workability and apparent lack of accuracy.

EDIT:
BTW: my Mavericks 10.9.5 Enhanced Dictation package folder is nowhere near that size, but is 784.6MB:


- Patrick
=======

 

[Karen P]

Sorry, Karen. I thought your problem was to do with Macs. Or so your header and first post suggested. It's certainly true that, as our Admin chscag said, not available on iDevices.

Ian

oh yes, I was originally talking about my iMac desktop, but after that I got to thinking of the iPad. Too bad, it's not available for that but at least I know now. Thanks.

 

[pm-r]

oh yes, I was originally talking about my iMac desktop, but after that I got to thinking of the iPad. Too bad, it's not available for that but at least I know now. Thanks.

You may be in for a pleasant surprise...
If your iPad is running at least iOS 13, you can certainly use it for dictation, at least according to Apple:

Dictate text on iPad

On iPad, you can dictate text instead of typing it. Make sure Enable Dictation is turned on.
On an iPad Pro, you can use dictation when you’re not connected to the Internet.

Dictate text on iPad

On iPad, dictate text instead of typing it.

support.apple.com

- Patrick
=======

 

[Randy B. Singer]

For those of you who have bemoaned the passing of Dragon Dictate for the Macintosh, you should know that speech to text is about to get a huge upgrade under the very soon to be released Mac OS Monterey. However, most of this goodness will require an M1 or M1x-based Mac:

"With keyboard dictation, you can dictate text anywhere you can type it, and the feature improves the more you use it, personalizing over time. On ‌Apple Silicon‌ Macs, keyboard dictation now protects user privacy by performing all processing on-device, meaning it's completely offline. And thanks to on-device dictation, users can also dictate text of any length without a timeout. On Intel Macs, however, there's a time limit of 60 seconds."

 

[Lifeisabeach]

For those of you who have bemoaned the passing of Dragon Dictate for the Macintosh, you should know that speech to text is about to get a huge upgrade under the very soon to be released Mac OS Monterey. However, most of this goodness will require an M1 or M1x-based Mac:

"With keyboard dictation, you can dictate text anywhere you can type it, and the feature improves the more you use it, personalizing over time. On ‌Apple Silicon‌ Macs, keyboard dictation now protects user privacy by performing all processing on-device, meaning it's completely offline. And thanks to on-device dictation, users can also dictate text of any length without a timeout. On Intel Macs, however, there's a time limit of 60 seconds."

I read about this the other day and it seemed horribly arbitrary for Apple to limit these enhanced features to the Apple Silicon Macs. But then on reading an earlier comment in this thread about Apple needing to license the tech from Nuance (now owned by MS), I'm wondering if this has more to do with licensing terms. As in.... maybe they are only ALLOWED to implement these features on non-Intel devices?

 

[pm-r]

For those of you who have bemoaned the passing of Dragon Dictate for the Macintosh, you should know that speech to text is about to get a huge upgrade under the very soon to be released Mac OS Monterey. However, most of this goodness will require an M1 or M1x-based Mac:

How horrendously pathetic and Apple should be thoroughly embarrassed over their lack of dictation improvements over the years.

It hasn't improved much since its introduction with Mac OS Mavericks 10.9.5. By comparison, the dictation based on the Google Chrome engine works amazingly well but unfortunately only works with Google Chrome and similar Google applications, but works amazingly well even in Mac OS Mavericks 10.9.5.

Dragon Dictate for the Macintosh was abandoned just before I was really needing a dictation application and I was almost considering looking for an eBay version until I read that the more recent versions of Dragon Dictate for the Macintosh we're becoming almost unusable. I wonder if that is what Apple ended up purchasing their license for???

Anyway, definitely nothing to get excited about, unfortunately, especially under those conditions.

Meanwhile, my thanks to Google for their Google dictation engine that works so amazingly well and small reasonable expenditure.

PS: I use both the paid-for Google Chrome extensions Dictanote (in it's own Chrome browser window) and Voice In Voice Typing and its assistant Voice In Plus (in any Chrome browser window). Yes, I also use a fair bit of copy and paste or option-drag from the Chrome browser windows to other places where the Google Chrome engine extension does not work.

Apple's built-in dictation is quite pathetic and frustrating to use by comparison. Actually mind-boggling at times how it comes up with some words it thinks I said, and well beyond funny or humorous, just absolutely crazy.


- Patrick
=======

 

[Randy B. Singer]

...I read that the more recent versions of Dragon Dictate for the Macintosh we're becoming almost unusable. I wonder if that is what Apple ended up purchasing their license for???


Meanwhile, my thanks to Google for their Google dictation engine that works so amazingly well and small reasonable expenditure.

I'm pretty sure that we had at least one discussion about all this previously on this list. There in only one dictation/transcription engine to speak of: Dragon. Nuance/Dragon bought up and discontinued all of their competition years ago. They now own not only the only product that you can purchase, but they also own all of the relevant patents, so there will be no new competitors (though there might be other products that license Dragon's technology).

Apple had it's own dictation/transcription product decades ago. For some reason they abandoned it, and now they license Dragon. As does everyone else. Siri, Alexa, Cortana, Google assistant, etc. are all based on Dragon technology.

Microsoft recently purchased Nuance/Dragon. I don't know if that means that dictation/transcription will now get increasingly better on the Mac over time...or worse. The one bright spot is that Microsoft can be seen as having a monopoly on this technology, and so I'm guessing that they will have to stick to FRAND (fair, legal and non-discriminatory pricing) standards.

Microsoft just bought the company that built Siri's voice recognition for Apple

Microsoft purchased Nuance, makers of Dragon speech-to-text tools, for $16 billion

www.androidpolice.com

What is FRAND?

FRAND is the acronym for fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory.

www.fieldfisher.com