Select and Speak · included with Pro
Select any text, hold the hotkey, say what you want
Not just for writing new text: Select and Speak edits what's already on the screen. Highlight a paragraph in any app, hold the hotkey, say "add bullets" or "make this shorter," and Dicta rewrites the selection and pastes it back, exactly where it was.
Select and Speak is part of Pro, and it ships at launch alongside the rest of the app, not later.
How it looks
Highlight, hold, speak. The text rewrites itself in place.
There is no separate editor window and no scratch document. Whatever you had selected is what gets transformed, and the result lands right where the old text was, so your cursor, your formatting context and your clipboard all stay put.
- 1. SelectHighlight text in any app, a sentence, a paragraph, a whole draft. No copying, no leaving the window.
- 2. HoldPress and hold your Dicta hotkey. That hold is what turns dictation into a command; nothing listens otherwise.
- 3. SpeakSay what you want done. Dicta matches your words to a command and runs the local model on the selection.
- 4. Paste in placeThe result drops straight back over the selection, in the same spot, with your clipboard untouched.
What it does
Editing by voice, not just dictation by voice
Plain dictation turns speech into new text. Select and Speak turns speech into an instruction that acts on text you already have, so you can reshape, translate or tidy a draft without touching the keyboard or moving it anywhere.
A command catalog, plus free-form
Rephrase, fix grammar only, turn it into a bulleted list or a numbered one, turn a list back into prose, make it shorter or longer, and change tone: eight built-in commands, intent-matched rather than keyword-exact, so close enough is enough. Ask for anything outside that set, translate this, summarize it, turn it into an e-mail, extract action items, and Dicta still runs your exact words as the instruction through the same local model.
Scoped to the moment, by design
Commands only exist while you're holding the hotkey with something selected. Plain dictation never treats your words as a command, by construction, so there is nothing to trigger by accident and no always-listening wake word: Dicta never listens outside the hotkey.
Undo like any other edit
The transform pastes like a normal edit, so Cmd+Z undoes it in the app you were in. Spoken undo is not available yet; press Cmd+Z instead.
Say it in your own words
There's no separate list to memorize: describe what you want in your own words and Dicta matches it to the right built-in command, or, if none fits, sends your exact words as the instruction to the same local model that powers everything else.
Some of what you can say
A forgiving command grammar
You don't need to hit an exact phrase. Close enough gets matched to the right command, and anything Dicta doesn't recognize still runs, as a plain rephrase using your words as the instruction.
- Rephrase this
- Add bullets
- Translate to French
- Fix grammar only
- Make it shorter
- Change tone: formal
- Summarize / tl;dr
- Turn into an email
- Extract action items
Local, always
Your selection never leaves your Mac
The selection, the command and the rewrite all run through the same on-device model as your dictation. A failed transform never destroys your selection or your clipboard, that's a hard rule, not a best effort: worst case, nothing changes.
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