How do you dictate in Terminal on a Mac?

Apple's Dictation may work in Terminal, but Apple's pages do not say so, and we did not test it. The route with documentation is Claude Code's voice dictation, which you turn on inside Terminal with the command /voice. It needs a Claude.ai sign-in, a local microphone and microphone permission for your terminal app in macOS. A third route is a dictation app that types into whichever window is in front, which includes Terminal; Yap, which we make, works that way.

Apple Dictation in Terminal is not documented

Apple says that with Dictation on a Mac you can speak to enter text anywhere you can type ¹. The Apple pages we read do not name Terminal, so do not assume it works there. To test it, click the empty prompt, press the Dictation shortcut, and speak one harmless word. If the word appears, Apple Dictation types into that prompt. If it does not, use Claude Code's route below.

Claude Code's /voice is the documented route

Claude Code's voice dictation is turned on by running /voice in the command-line tool ². It is separate from Apple's Dictation, and it has its own limits:

• It is available only when you sign in with a Claude.ai account, not with an API key or a cloud provider ³.
• It streams the recorded audio to Anthropic's servers for transcription, and the audio is not processed on the computer ⁴. If you want the audio to stay on your Mac, this route does not give you that.
• It needs a local microphone, so open Terminal on the Mac itself. It does not work in cloud sessions or SSH sessions ⁵.

Your terminal app needs microphone permission

When you enable voice dictation, Claude Code runs a microphone check. If access is denied, Claude Code's troubleshooting says to go to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Microphone on a Mac, enable your terminal app, and then run /voice again ⁶.

If your terminal app does not appear in that list, there is no switch you can turn on ⁷. Claude Code's docs describe a reset of the terminal's microphone permission, so read the docs before you run the reset command. Afterward, quit the terminal with Cmd+Q, not only its windows. macOS does not prompt a process that is already running, so the new prompt appears only after a restart of the app ⁸.

The order to check

1. Confirm that Terminal is on the Mac itself, not in a remote session.
2. Confirm that you are signed in with a Claude.ai account, then run /voice.
3. If access is denied, enable Terminal in the Microphone list and run /voice again.
4. If Terminal is missing from the list, reset its permission as the docs describe, quit with Cmd+Q, reopen Terminal, and run /voice.

If Claude Code's dictation does not start at all, why dictation is enabled but not working covers the common causes. For Word, see how to dictate in Word on a Mac. For Google Docs, see does Mac dictation work in Google Docs. Claude Code's dictation is also covered on our Claude Code dictation page and in voice dictation for AI coding tools. For the Mac's built-in options, see the guide to dictation in Mac apps, and for the subject as a whole, dictation on Mac. If the term is new to you, see dictation.