Voice notes into Obsidian on Mac.
Your vault is plain files on your own disk, on purpose. Dictation that uploads your voice to write into it would be an odd thing to bolt on.
Local files deserve local dictation
People choose Obsidian for a specific reason: the notes are markdown files on a disk you control, readable in twenty years by anything, owned by nobody else. That is a deliberate position, and most dictation would quietly undo it by sending every sentence you speak to a server on the way into the file.
Zumbo does not. The speech engine ships inside the app and composes on your Mac. There is no account, no API key and no network request needed to transcribe, so a local vault stays local all the way from your voice to the file.
No plugin, because there is nothing to integrate
Hold it to talk, tap it to toggle, Escape cancels. Pick the key in Settings.
- Put the cursor in the note.
- Hold your shortcut, which you chose in Settings during setup.
- Talk for as long as you need. There is no session limit.
- Let go. The text lands in about a fifth of a second, punctuated.
Obsidian's markdown still applies to the text that arrives: a dash at the start of a line is a bullet, double brackets open a link. Nothing about your vault changes and nothing needs to be kept up to date across Obsidian releases.
The notes that do not get written
A vault is a record of thinking, and the gap between vaults that are useful and vaults that are a graveyard is whether the thinking actually got written down at the time. What gets lost is always the same material: why you chose this approach, what the conversation was about, what you understood after reading the thing, what you want to remember about the person you just met.
All of it is thirty seconds spoken and four minutes typed, and the four minutes are why it is not there.
Capture when the vault is not open
Press New note in Zumbo and talk. It stays inside Zumbo on the Mac, searchable, without being pasted anywhere, and you can move it into the vault when you are back at it. If you say a time it becomes a reminder, so remind me to write up the interview tomorrow at nine sets one for tomorrow at nine.
Your own vocabulary
Vaults are full of names that exist nowhere else: people, projects, concepts you invented, the shorthand you use with yourself. Correct each one once with Teach and it is heard your way from then on, stored on your Mac alongside everything else that never leaves it.
Related: dictation for writers, dictation with the Wi-Fi off, and how Zumbo keeps your voice on your Mac.
Do I need a plugin?
No. Zumbo types where the cursor is, so the editor, a note title, the quick switcher and the search box all work without anything installed in Obsidian.
Does it write markdown?
It writes text. Obsidian's own markdown handling applies to it, so a line that starts with a dash is a bullet and double brackets still open a link, exactly as if you had typed them.
Can I dictate straight into a daily note?
Yes. Open the note, put the cursor at the end, hold your shortcut and talk. There is no session limit, so a full entry is one press.
What about capturing something away from the vault?
Press New note in Zumbo and talk. It stays inside Zumbo on the Mac, searchable, and you can paste it into the vault whenever you like. Say a time and it becomes a reminder.
Does anything sync to a server to transcribe?
No. The speech engine ships inside the app and runs on your Mac, which is the same promise your vault already makes.
Free for 3 days, everything unlocked. Then $15 once. macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon.