Dictation built for writers, not call centres.
The hard part of a first draft is not typing it, it is starting it. Talking has a different relationship with the blank page than typing does.
Why talking beats typing for a first draft
Typing and editing use the same part of your attention, so you edit as you go whether you meant to or not. You watch the sentence appear, you dislike the third word, you fix it, and the paragraph you were holding in your head is gone. Every writer knows this and most have a ritual designed to prevent it.
Speaking does not offer that option. You keep going because stopping mid sentence is unnatural out loud. The draft you get is longer and worse, which is exactly what a first draft should be: material to cut rather than a blank page to fill. The measured gap is about three times, and it is widest precisely where you are composing rather than copying.
The names problem
Fiction and non fiction both run into the same wall. Character names, place names, a source's surname, a technical term in the world you are writing about: none of these are in a general speech model, so it spells the nearest ordinary word and you find twenty of them at the edit.
Ship the Q3 roadmap before Friday.
Teach fixes it at the moment it happens. Select the word, type what you meant, press Teach. Three seconds, and the name is right for the rest of the book. The corrections stay on your Mac and accumulate into a vocabulary that belongs to this project rather than to a generic dictionary.
There are also twenty one vocabulary packs, including writing and research, and you can switch on whichever match what you are working on.
No session limit, which matters more than it sounds
Dictation that ends on its own is useless for a paragraph. You learn to speak in short bursts and check the screen, and once you are checking the screen you are editing again, which was the whole thing you were trying to avoid. Zumbo listens for as long as you hold your shortcut. A long paragraph is one press, and you can pause to think without it deciding you are finished.
Away from the desk
The best sentences tend to arrive while walking. Because the engine runs on your own Mac with no network in the path, dictation works on a train, in a garden, on a plane or in a room with terrible reception. Press New note and talk, and the text stays inside Zumbo, searchable, without being pasted anywhere. Say a time and it becomes a reminder.
Your manuscript stays yours
Writers have a specific version of the privacy question: an unpublished manuscript is the asset. Zumbo has no server for your voice, no account and no API key, and the speech engine ships inside the app. Nothing is uploaded, cached or logged anywhere else. There is no data retention policy to read, because there is no database to retain anything in.
Where it fits in the day
Not every kind of writing. Poetry, no. A sentence you are sculpting, no. What it is for is the two thousand words of draft that stand between you and having something to edit, the research notes you would otherwise not make, the reply to your editor, and the synopsis nobody wants to write.
Related: speaking against typing speed, with the studies, the 21 vocabulary packs, and dictation with the Wi-Fi off.
Will dictation ruin my prose?
It changes what a first draft is. Dictated drafts are longer, looser and closer to speech, which means more to cut and less to invent. If your problem is a blank page, that is the right trade. If your problem is over writing, it is not.
Can it handle character and place names?
That is what Teach is for. Say the name, see what it guessed, select it, type what you meant, press Teach. From then on it is spelled your way and the correction stays on your Mac.
Does it work in my writing app?
It types where the cursor is, so Scrivener, Ulysses, iA Writer, Word, Google Docs in a browser, Obsidian and a plain text file all behave the same. There is nothing to install per app.
What about punctuation?
It is inferred from how you speak rather than dictated. You do not have to say comma and full stop, although the sentence you get is only as well punctuated as the sentence you said.
Is my manuscript uploaded anywhere?
No. The speech engine ships inside the app and runs on your Mac. There is no account and no network request needed to transcribe.
Can I dictate away from the desk?
Yes, and it is one of the better reasons to use it. There is no session limit and no network needed, so a paragraph worked out while pacing is one press of your shortcut.
Free for 3 days, everything unlocked. Then $15 once. macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon.