There are dozens of online speech to text tools: open a page, allow the microphone, talk, copy the result. They’re free, they need no install, and they all share one design decision that decides whether they work for you: the text stays on their page.
When online is enough
You need a transcript of one thing, once. A voice memo you want as text. A paragraph for a form. You’ll paste it once and never think about it again. An online tool is perfect for that.
When it isn’t
You want to reply to a Slack thread, answer an email, write a prompt, add a note. That’s dozens of short pieces of text a day, each in a different app, and with an online tool each one is: switch to the page, talk, select, copy, switch back, paste. The time you saved talking is spent shuffling windows. Within a week you’re typing again.
What an app does differently
A dictation app runs in the background and types into whatever you’re using. There is no page. You hold a key, talk, let go, and the text is in the message box. The second difference is the text itself: online tools use the browser’s speech engine and give you a transcript, while a proper app runs the words through a cleanup model, so ums go, punctuation appears, grammar is fixed, and your names are spelt right.
On a Mac
Speaky Box is a dictation app for Mac built on that idea: every app, finished text, a key you hold, and a second key that writes for the app you’re in, from a prompt in Claude to an email in Mail. It’s free for 2,000 words a week with no card, which is more than most people dictate online in a month.
If you’ve been using Speechnotes or Speechtexter, the switch takes a minute and the copy button never comes back.