How can I write emails by speaking on my Mac?

Quick answer — November 1, 2026: Put your cursor in an email draft and use Dictop to record your message, transcribe it and insert the text. Add replacements for recurring names and optionally use AI cleanup. For important emails, enable edit-before-paste and review the wording before sending. Insertion depends on the mail app, field and macOS permissions.

An email is often easier to explain aloud than to compose one keystroke at a time. The difficulty is turning that explanation into a message that sounds like you and preserves exactly what you intended to promise.

Speak the message in useful pieces

Open a new draft in your usual mail app and focus the message body. Start Dictop with your shortcut or the menu bar. Speak a short paragraph, stop, and review what arrives.

For a longer email, dictate the purpose first, then the details, then the action you need from the recipient. Separate recordings give you a chance to check each part before adding the next.

On-demand recording is a useful starting point because you decide when each passage is complete. You can pause and resume while thinking without treating every silence as the end of a message.

Handle names and repeated wording

If the recognizer repeatedly gets a colleague's name or a project title wrong, create a replacement rule using the actual error. Check the result in several sentences so the rule does not alter ordinary words unexpectedly.

Insertion settings also control surrounding spaces and line breaks. Choose settings that suit paragraphs in your email editor, and test them in a draft before relying on them during a busy conversation.

Use AI cleanup without inventing commitments

For example, you can ask AI cleanup:

“Clean up this email draft. Correct grammar and remove filler. Keep my tone, dates, names, conditions and degree of certainty. Do not invent a greeting, sign-off, promise or detail. Return only the revised draft.”

Review the result, especially phrases such as “if approved,” “I think,” and “could.” Removing them can turn a tentative statement into a commitment.

Dictop supports Apple Intelligence refinement where available and compatible cloud refinement using credits. Choose the option that fits how you want your message processed.

Review before delivery

In on-demand mode with Paste delivery selected, edit-before-paste gives you a checkpoint for the transcript before it reaches the draft. Turn off Press a key after insertion if you want to control submission yourself; that optional setting can send Return or another key after delivery. Check dates, attachments you mention and recipient names. Then review the email in your mail app and send it yourself when ready.

Dictop helps produce and insert the wording; the destination email service still handles the message you submit under its own terms.

Try Dictop for Mac. Read the insertion guide for output methods and permissions.