Leave Voice Comments Instantly on Your Mac: My Simple Setup (and Why It’s Better Than Built-In Dictation)

Ever wish you could just hit a hotkey, record a quick voice note, and have it instantly transcribed as text, ready to paste wherever you need?

I built a super-easy workflow to do exactly that, and it’s made leaving comments, notes, and reminders way faster and smoother. (It's what I used to write this post).

Here’s how it works, why I use it instead of Mac’s built-in dictation, and how you can try it yourself.

Why Not Just Use the Mac’s Built-In Dictation?

It’s a fair question! Macs have dictation features built-in, and they’re fine for short snippets or occasional use. But if you want something:

Accurate for longer recordings
Customizable (so you can add hotkeys, automate what happens to the transcript, or chain actions together)
That doesn't interrupt your flow

…then this setup blows the built-in option out of the water.

Plus, with this workflow, you’re in control: you decide exactly how, where, and when your voice is captured and transcribed. You can even tweak the script to send your notes directly to your favorite app, run further automations, or format the text however you like.

What I Use

I’m using Hammerspoon, a powerful open-source Mac automation tool. If you haven’t heard of it, Hammerspoon lets you write small scripts that automate almost anything on your Mac.

I use it for a bunch of things, like organizing my Downloads folder and assigning different hotkeys to various tasks.

For transcription, I use Deepgram, which is a super-fast and accurate speech-to-text API. One of the best parts: Deepgram gives you $200 in free credits when you sign up, and since transcription is so cheap, that’s enough to last a really long time for most users.

Here's the script + instructions on how to set it up: https://gist.github.com/dunctk/d2f396bb273af1d1d634084742162258

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