Dictate / Bilingual dictation
Bilingual dictation on Mac, with no language setting
An English email, then a Danish message, then a German reply. Dictate notices which language you're speaking and types it, transcribed on your own Mac.
7 days free, then $49 once, lifetime license, no subscription · Apple Silicon Mac · macOS 14 Sonoma or later
The setting you never have to change
If you work in two languages, most dictation tools make you say which one you're about to speak. Forget, and you get English words forced out of Danish sounds. Switching in settings ten times a day is exactly the kind of friction that makes people stop dictating.
Dictate has no language setting. It uses NVIDIA's Parakeet model, which recognises the language as part of transcribing. Hold the key and answer a client in English; let go; hold it again and message a colleague in Danish. Each dictation comes out in the language you spoke.
Accents and special letters, without the layout dance
Dictate pastes the finished text at your cursor rather than typing it key by key, so your keyboard layout doesn't matter. Æ, ø and å, German ß, Hungarian ő, Polish ł and Czech ř arrive as spoken, whether your keyboard is set to US English or something else.
Names and terms the model mishears in any language can be fixed once with substitutions. Hesitation sounds are removed too, in English, Danish, German and Swedish ("um", "øh", "äh"), without touching words like German "um" or Portuguese "um".
21 European languages
These are the Latin-script European languages Parakeet TDT v3 supports. Any of them can follow any other, from one dictation to the next.
- English
- Croatian
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- Estonian
- Finnish
- French
- German
- Hungarian
- Italian
- Latvian
- Lithuanian
- Maltese
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Slovak
- Slovenian
- Spanish
- Swedish
Every language stays on your Mac
All 21 languages are transcribed on your Mac's Neural Engine, with no internet connection and nothing uploaded. That differs from tools that run some languages on the device and send others to a server. The privacy page lists every connection the app makes, and what on-device dictation means explains why it matters.
What it doesn't do
- Greek, Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian and non-European languages are not supported.
- Switching language in the middle of a sentence is unreliable; switch between dictations.
- It doesn't translate. It types what you said, in the language you said it.
Apple Dictation works from languages you choose in settings; see how the two compare in Apple Dictation vs Dictate.
Questions
Is there dictation that switches languages automatically on Mac?
Yes. Dictate detects which of its 21 European languages you are speaking each time you dictate, so you can write an English email and then a Danish message without changing anything. Apple Dictation, by contrast, works from the languages you choose in its settings.
Which languages does Dictate support?
21 Latin-script European languages: English, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish. Greek, Bulgarian, Russian and Ukrainian are not supported.
Can I mix two languages in one sentence?
Dictate works best with one language per dictation. Single borrowed words, like an English product name in a German sentence, usually come through; switching languages mid-sentence is less reliable. Release the key and start a new dictation when you switch.
Do I need a different keyboard layout or setting per language?
No. There is no language setting at all. Your keyboard layout doesn't matter either, because Dictate pastes the text rather than typing it key by key, so accents and letters such as æ, ø, å, ß or ő come out as spoken.
Try it in both your languages
Apple Silicon Mac · macOS 14 Sonoma or later