Slack voice to text on a Mac.
Dictate the message, not a voice clip.

Does Slack have voice to text?

Slack's own help describes no feature that types your speech into the message box. What Slack offers is audio and video clips: in a channel or DM you click the microphone icon in the message field, talk for up to five minutes, click the tick and send. Slack's help says clips are available on all subscriptions, and a transcript can be added with the Generate transcript icon.

So a Slack clip is a voice message with an optional transcript, not a typed reply. That suits a long explanation or a walkthrough. It suits a quick answer in a thread less well, because the person on the other end has to play it or open the transcript, and they cannot search or quote it the way they would a typed message.

How to dictate Slack messages on a Mac

To dictate a typed Slack message on a Mac, turn on Dictation in System Settings > Keyboard > Dictation, click in Slack's message field, then press the Microphone key (if your keyboard has one) or the Dictation shortcut you picked. Speak, then press Escape or the shortcut again to stop. The words appear in Slack's message box, unsent.

Apple's guide says Dictation adds commas, full stops and question marks for you in supported languages, that you can say "new line", and that it stops after 30 seconds without speech. It does this in the Slack desktop app and in Slack in a browser, because it types into whatever field has the cursor. What it does not do is drop your ums or keep the version of a sentence you corrected halfway through: it writes down everything you said. For the rest of Mac dictation, see speech to text on a Mac.

Slack clips, macOS Dictation or Speaky Box?

If you only reply by voice now and then, macOS Dictation is free and good enough: fix the odd word and send. If you want to talk rather than type, send a clip. Speaky Box is for people who answer much of their Slack by voice and want each message ready to send without fixing it first. We make Speaky Box. Sources, read 20 October 2026: Slack's Create audio and video clips in Slack and Set your Enter key preference, and Apple's Dictate messages and documents on Mac. The full comparison with Mac dictation.

What a spoken Slack reply looks like

A typical spoken thread reply is a yes with a condition attached. Said out loud, it comes out like this:

yeah happy to take that, um, but can we push the review to thursday, not wednesday, because sam's off till then and she wrote most of it

Speaky Box's Smart key sees that Slack is the app in front and keeps it a message: short, no greeting, no sign-off. This is what lands in the message box:

Happy to take that, but can we push the review to Thursday? Sam's off till then and she wrote most of it.

The um has gone, Wednesday has gone because you changed your mind, and Sam has a capital. In Mail the same key writes a full email instead; see dictating email on a Mac.

Stop Enter sending a half-finished message

If Enter sends your Slack messages before you are ready, change it. In Slack on a Mac, click your profile picture, choose Preferences, open Advanced, and under "When writing a message, press Enter to" pick Start a new line. Then Command + Enter sends. If you keep Enter as send, Shift + Enter gives you a new line instead.

This matters more when you talk than when you type. If you say "new line" with macOS Dictation, you get a line break, but a stray press of Enter while you check the words sends whatever is there. Neither macOS Dictation nor Speaky Box presses Enter for you: the message waits in the box until you send it.

Tips for talking to Slack

Click into the right box first

The channel message field, a thread reply, a DM and the edit box of a message you already sent are all separate fields. Speaky Box and macOS Dictation type into the one with the cursor, so click the thread reply box before you talk if you mean to reply in the thread.

Put your team's names in the Words list

Colleagues' names, customers, product code names and channel names are the words dictation gets wrong. Add them to Speaky Box's Words list once and they are spelt your way in Slack and in every other app.

Use the Dictate key for exact words

The Smart key shapes a message. When you want your words as you said them, ums removed and nothing restructured, hold the Dictate key instead. That is the one to use for a code snippet description or a quote.

Slack audio not working on a Mac?

If Slack's microphone icon or Dictation picks up nothing, check System Settings > Privacy & Security > Microphone and make sure Slack (or your browser, for Slack on the web) is switched on, and that the right input is chosen in System Settings > Sound.

The same keys work in Apple Notes for meeting notes and in Claude for prompts.