Dictate emails on a Mac

With inlaut you speak your emails straight into Apple Mail, Outlook or Gmail in the browser. Hold a key, speak, let go: the text appears where your cursor is. Speech recognition runs on your Mac.

As of 20 October 2026, inlaut 0.5.1. This page is written by the developer of inlaut, a free dictation app for the Mac.

How to dictate an email

1. Open a new email or a reply and put the cursor in the body.
2. Hold your shortcut or the 🌐 fn key and speak. For longer emails, tap fn twice and dictate hands-free.
3. Let go. inlaut turns your words into text and pastes it at the cursor.
4. Read it over before you press Send. inlaut never sends anything.

The subject line works the same way: cursor in the field, hold the key, speak.

Greeting, paragraphs and sign-off as you speak

“New paragraph” adds a blank line, “new line” a single line break. Short lines such as the greeting or “Best regards” get a comma instead of a full stop, and the name below gets no punctuation at all.

With the language set to German or Deutsch + English, “neue Zeile” and “neuer Absatz” work too.

Stock replies as snippets

Bank details, directions, opening hours: anything you write again and again goes into “Snippets” in the settings, together with a phrase such as “my bank details”. Say the phrase on its own and inlaut inserts the stored text exactly as you wrote it. In the middle of a sentence the phrase stays ordinary text.

Names spelled right

If your client is called Mayr, not Meyer, add a replacement: “Meyer” on the left, “Mayr” on the right. From then on the spelling is right in every dictation and every app. The same helps with company names, product names and jargon. Replacements and snippets can be exported and imported on another Mac.

Leave out the ums and slips

Two settings help when you stumble while speaking. Both are off until you turn them on.

• Tidy up dictations: filler sounds such as “uh” and words you said twice by accident are dropped.
• Resolve self-corrections (beta): “on Monday, no, on Tuesday” becomes “on Tuesday”. Apple Intelligence checks on your Mac whether you really corrected yourself.

inlaut only deletes words. It never rewrites anything and does not write emails for you.

Which apps it works in

Any app that accepts pasting with ⌘V: Apple Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, Spark, Gmail or Outlook in the browser, and the message fields of Teams or Slack. inlaut needs the Accessibility permission once for this. Without it the text stays on the clipboard and you paste it yourself.

What happens to your words

Speech recognition runs on your Mac. Recordings and dictations are neither kept as a history nor transmitted, and the microphone is only on while you dictate. Your email leaves the Mac when you send it, through your mail provider like any typed email.

Limits

• inlaut understands English and German, mixed too, but no other languages.
• Bullet lists, bold text and emoji cannot be dictated as commands.
• This page describes the Mac version for Apple Silicon with macOS 26 or later. The Windows beta has voice commands, replacements and snippets, but no tidying and no self-corrections.

Get to know inlaut

More ways to use inlaut

• Dictate promptsSpeak long prompts for ChatGPT, Claude and Cursor.
• Audio to textTranscribe interviews and recordings on your Mac.
• Dictation apps comparedTen Mac apps side by side.

Frequently asked questions

Can I dictate in Outlook and Gmail?

Yes. inlaut pastes the text into any text field that accepts pasting: Apple Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, or Gmail and Outlook in the browser. It needs the Accessibility permission once to do that.

How do I dictate a new paragraph in an email?

Say “new paragraph” for a blank line and “new line” for a single line break. Short lines like “Hi Sarah” or “Best regards” get a comma instead of a full stop.

Does inlaut rewrite my emails with AI?

No. inlaut writes down what you say. If you want, it deletes filler sounds, words said twice and slips you corrected yourself, but it never rewrites anything.

Is my email sent to a server?

Not by inlaut. Speech recognition runs on your Mac, and recordings and dictations are neither stored nor transmitted. The email leaves your Mac when you press Send in your mail app.

Notes

Product and company names are trademarks of their owners and are used only to identify the products. inlaut is not affiliated with any of these companies.

Something out of date or missing? Write to hallo@inlaut.de.