How do you dictate an email in Mac Mail?

To dictate an email in Mac Mail, use Apple Dictation. Turn Dictation on, click in the body of a new message or reply, then press your Dictation shortcut and speak. Apple says Dictation works anywhere you can type on a Mac ¹. Apple's pages do not name Mail, so the steps below are based on that general statement, and you should test a short message before you rely on the feature for a long email.

Turn on Dictation, then dictate into the message body

Dictation is switched on in Keyboard settings. Use these steps on the Mac:

1. Choose Apple menu > System Settings, then click Keyboard in the sidebar.
2. Open the Dictation section and turn Dictation on ².
3. Open Mail, click New Message or reply to a message, and click in the message body.
4. Press your Dictation shortcut and speak. Press the shortcut again to stop. The Mac dictation shortcut guide explains the shortcut options.
5. To start a new line or paragraph, say new line or new paragraph ³.

Keep the insertion point in the message body while you dictate. The subject line and the address fields are separate text boxes, and we did not test dictation into them, so type those by hand.

Apple's general statement covers composing messages, but Mail is not named

Apple's description of general text Dictation gives composing messages and notes as its examples, and says that dictating in a search box is not part of that example ⁴. A message body in Mail is text you compose, so it falls under the same general statement. That is our reading. Apple does not name Mail on the pages we read, so we cannot confirm the behavior for Mail from Apple's own wording.

For that reason, test the feature with a short message to yourself before you rely on it for a long one. Type one sentence, dictate one sentence, and check that the text lands in the body.

Long emails, pauses and the words to check

Length is rarely the limit. Apple says you can dictate text of any length without a timeout ⁵. The limit is silence. Dictation stops automatically when no speech is detected for 30 seconds ⁶, so if your email stops growing in the middle of a sentence, check for a long pause first. Our guide to why Mac dictation stops or types nothing covers the other causes.

Apple's Dictation also underlines ambiguous text in blue, so you can click the underlined word and choose another option ⁷. Look for those blue underlines before you send, because they mark the words the feature was least sure of. The question on typing while you dictate on a Mac covers editing alongside dictation.

Check the privacy setting before you dictate private mail

Apple's Mac Help says you can check whether general text Dictation is processed on your device and not sent to Siri servers ⁸. The check is in Keyboard settings. Apple's wording covers general text Dictation, such as composing messages and notes, and not dictating in a search box. If the content of your email is sensitive, look at that setting first.

If Mail does not work, try a different route

When Dictation does not type in Mail, work through these in order:

• Confirm that Dictation is on in System Settings > Keyboard, then test in a new message with one harmless word.
• Confirm that the cursor is in the message body. Dictation types at the cursor, so confirm that the cursor is in the message body.
• For Outlook for Mac, Microsoft has its own Dictate button, described in the question on dictating in Outlook on a Mac.
• For Gmail in a browser, read the question on whether Gmail has voice typing.

If you write long emails every day, a dedicated Mac dictation app is another option. Yap, which we make, runs dictation on the Mac itself, and the download page lists what it includes.

For the wider picture, read our guide to dictation in Mac apps and our overview of dictation on Mac. The question on dictating a professional email covers tone and structure, and the question on spoken punctuation on Mac covers the punctuation that Dictation adds on its own. The Apple Dictation glossary entry and the microphone key entry define the terms used here.