Guide
Dictating in Google Docs
Google Docs already has voice typing. It is also the one place where the difference between local and cloud transcription is easiest to see.
The short answer
Voz types into the document at your cursor, in any browser, with no Chrome requirement and no audio leaving your Mac.
Google's own Voice Typing is a Chrome-only feature that streams your speech to Google to be transcribed. Voz does the transcription first and gives Docs finished text.
Docs has Voice Typing. When is that the better choice?
When you are already in Chrome, the document is not sensitive, and you want something free and built in. It handles punctuation commands well and costs nothing. That is a real answer and worth saying first.
Voz is the better choice when any of those break down: you use Safari, Firefox or Arc; the document is client work, medical, legal or under NDA; or you want one dictation key that behaves identically in Docs, Slack and your editor rather than a different mechanism per app.
Setting it up
- Install Voz and grant microphone and accessibility permission when macOS asks.
- Open the document in whatever browser you use and click where the text should go.
- Hold your push-to-talk key, speak, release.
- No Chrome extension, no Tools menu, nothing to enable per document.
Worth knowing
- Say "new line" for a paragraph break; formatting is still applied with the keyboard.
- Add names and terminology to custom vocabulary — shared documents are full of proper nouns.
- Suggesting mode works the same way, since Voz is only typing.
- The audio never leaves the machine, so a dictated document is no more exposed than a typed one.