Guides
How to actually use your voice on a Mac
Short, specific guides for one task each. No preamble: the steps are in the first screen.
Dictation software is easy to install and surprisingly easy to give up on. Almost always for the same three reasons: the shortcut fights something else, names come out wrong, and nobody ever showed you that a ten-second read-back is part of the workflow rather than a failure of it.
These guides fix one of those at a time. Every one is written for an Apple Silicon Mac and tested on the current release. VV also runs on Windows PCs, under the same licence — see VV for Windows.
Start with how dictation works. And if your week is calls, Vaitly Meetings records and writes them up with no bot; meeting notes by voice covers the workflow.
How to Dictate on a Mac: A Practical Guide
Set up dictation on a Mac in five minutes, learn the four habits that make it stick, and fix the three things that make most people give up in week one.
Read itHow to Make Dictation Understand Names, Brands and Jargon
Dictation feels inaccurate because it mis-spells fifteen specific words. Teaching it those words takes fifteen minutes and removes most of your corrections.
How to Dictate Better ChatGPT Prompts on Mac or PC
Spoken prompts are three times longer than typed ones, and prompt length is what answer quality tracks. The workflow, and why the audio should stay on your computer.
How to Dictate Claude Prompts on Mac or Windows
Claude rewards long, specific prompts more than most models. Dictation is how you produce them without the typing cost. Workflow, habits and the privacy point.
How to Dictate Prompts and Notes in Cursor
Dictating into Cursor's chat and composer gets you longer, more contextual prompts — which is the single biggest lever on the quality of what it writes back.
How to Dictate Gmail Messages on Mac or Windows
Gmail has no voice typing of its own. A system-wide app on your Mac or PC dictates into compose, replies and search, in any browser, with Smart Compose still working.
How to Dictate in Google Docs on Mac or Windows
Two ways to dictate into Google Docs on a Mac or PC: Google's own voice typing, and a system-wide app. What each does well, and why you should never run both at once.
How to Dictate Messages in Microsoft Teams on Mac and Windows
Teams chat has no Dictate button of its own. A system-wide app on your Mac or PC works in chats, channels and the compose box — with one hazard worth knowing about.
How to Dictate in Microsoft Word on Mac or Windows
Word's own dictate button needs a Microsoft 365 subscription and a connection. An on-device dictation app needs neither. Both work — here is how, and how they differ.
How to Dictate in Notion on Mac or Windows
Dictating into Notion works with no integration, but blocks and the slash menu need handling. Here is the workflow, including databases and long documents.
How to Dictate in Slack on Mac or Windows
Dictate Slack messages without a plugin, and avoid the one mistake everyone makes: sending half a message to a channel. Threads, code blocks and formatting covered.
How to Dictate in VS Code on Mac or Windows
Dictate Copilot prompts, commit messages, comments and documentation in VS Code without an extension — and the keybinding conflicts to resolve first.
How to Dictate LinkedIn Posts and Messages on Mac or PC
Spoken LinkedIn posts read better than typed ones, because you stop writing in corporate voice. The workflow, the character limit, and handling @ and #.
How to Fix Dictation Mistakes on a Mac or PC
Most dictation errors come from four causes, and only one of them is the model. Microphone, room, speaking rate and vocabulary, in the order worth fixing them.
How to Turn Rough Dictation Into Clean Emails and Bullets
Speech produces filler, repetition and no punctuation. Three ways to get from that to finished text: say the punctuation, edit by hand, or rewrite automatically.
How to Set Up Dictation That Works With No Internet
Everything to do before you get on the plane: the model download, permissions, licence activation and the three checks that prove it will actually work offline.
How to Dictate Privately on a Mac or PC
A practical setup for dictating confidential material: which app, which settings, what to check, and the three places a private setup usually leaks.
How to Voice Type Anywhere on Mac
System-wide dictation types where your cursor is, in every Mac app, with no plugins. How it works, the permission it needs, and the four places it doesn't reach.
How to Use Speech-to-Text on Mac: Every Method
Four ways to get speech into text on a Mac — built-in dictation, a system-wide app, in-app features and file transcription — and which one your task needs.
How to Turn Short Voice Triggers Into Full Text Snippets
Say three words, get a paragraph. How to set up spoken snippets on a Mac or PC, which ones to make first, and the trigger phrases that cause trouble.
20 pages in this section. All of them work without JavaScript.
What VV does
Two jobs, one app: meetings written up, and dictation in any app.
Show a task once. Get the step-by-step guide.
Do it on your screen and talk it through. Every click and every new screen becomes a step with a picture and your words. Play it back with captions and an AI voice, or send it as a PDF, a web page or a video.
- Steps made for you from clicks and screen changes
- Your voice, or an AI voice, with captions
Every call, written up. No bot.
When a call starts, VV records it in the background. Nothing joins the call and no Teams or Zoom admin has to approve anything. Afterwards: minutes, decisions and action items.
- Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, WhatsApp, Slack, FaceTime, Webex
- Record now for meetings in the room
Press a key, speak, and it types. Anywhere.
Hold fn on a Mac (Right Ctrl on Windows), say it, let go: the words appear wherever your cursor is. Transcribed on your computer, in any app.
- Mail, Outlook, Slack, Word, Notion, code editors, the browser
- Vocabulary and snippets for your own words (Pro)
Polished, searchable, turned into tasks.
SmartText tidies what you say on your computer. Search every meeting, ask questions of them, track the action items, and send notes to Word, PDF, Notion or Slack.
- SmartText punctuation and lists, on your computer
- Search and Ask your meetings; action items tracked