Dragon dictation for Mac was discontinued in 2018. Now what.
Nuance stopped selling Dragon Professional Individual for Mac in 2018. If you have been holding on to a copy, or you moved to Windows to keep it, this is what the Mac has instead.
What actually happened
Dragon Professional Individual for Mac was discontinued by Nuance in 2018, and support for it ended after that. The Windows line carried on. The Mac product did not, and nothing from the same company took its place. People who depended on it did one of three things: kept an ageing copy running on an ageing machine, moved that part of their work to Windows, or gave up and went back to the keyboard.
Eight years of macOS releases have made the first option worse every year. Permissions moved, the accessibility APIs changed, the processors changed architecture. An unsupported application from 2018 is not a working plan now, even on the days it still opens.
What people actually used it for
Most of the Dragon workload was one thing: getting spoken words into an application, accurately, including the words of a particular profession. The full command grammar, the macros and the transcription of recorded files mattered to some people and not to most. If you are honest about which of those you used, the replacement question gets a lot simpler.
What the Mac has instead
A generation of Mac apps now does the core job better than Dragon did, for a simple reason: the model runs on the Mac's own silicon, fast enough that the text appears while you are still talking. Zumbo is built for that job. You hold your shortcut, talk at your normal speed, and the words land where your cursor already was, in whatever application you were already in. Terminal, Mail, a browser form, an editor, a chat window. If there is a cursor, there is dictation.
It takes about a fifth of a second for a sentence to land, which is the part that decides whether you keep using something. Nothing is uploaded, because there is nothing to upload to: the engine is inside the download rather than on a server. That is also why the download is around 570 MB.
The vocabulary problem, solved from the other end
Dragon's strength was that it could be taught a profession. You sat down and built a vocabulary, and it paid off over years. Zumbo gets to the same place from the other direction. Twenty one vocabulary packs cover fields like developer tools, legal, medical, design and marketing, and you switch on the ones that match your work during setup. On top of that, when a word comes out wrong you select it, type what you meant and press Teach. It is heard your way from then on, and the correction stays on your Mac.
Ship the Q3 roadmap before Friday.
The practical difference is that you never sit down to build a list. The list is a byproduct of working.
What you do not get
There is no Dragon style command grammar, no macro language, and no way to import a vocabulary file you built years ago. If your Dragon use was mostly voice control of the interface rather than writing, this is not the same product and it would be dishonest to say it was. macOS has its own Voice Control for that, built in, and it is a better fit for commands than any dictation app.
What it costs
Dragon was an expensive one time purchase, and the thing people liked least about what came after was the drift to monthly billing. Zumbo is bought once: $15 for one Mac, $20 for three, $79 for ten. Updates are free. There is a three day trial with everything unlocked and no card.
Related: the Mac dictation apps side by side, the 21 vocabulary packs, and Zumbo against Superwhisper.
Can I still buy Dragon for Mac?
No. Nuance discontinued Dragon Professional Individual for Mac in 2018 and support for it ended afterwards. The Windows products continued; the Mac one did not.
Will my old Dragon for Mac copy keep working?
Every macOS release since has changed the permissions model, the accessibility APIs and the silicon. An unsupported 2018 application is not a plan for 2026, even where it still launches.
Is there a direct replacement with the same features?
Nothing rebuilds Dragon's full command and correction system on the Mac. What has replaced it is a generation of apps that put words under your cursor in any application, run the model on your own machine, and learn the words you use. That covers what most people used Dragon for.
What about the custom vocabulary I built in Dragon?
There is no import path. Zumbo builds the same thing a different way: turn on the vocabulary packs for your field, then correct a word once with Teach and it is heard your way from then on. The list grows out of your own work rather than being typed in up front.
Do I have to learn a key combination again?
No. You pick your own shortcut in Settings the first time you open Zumbo and change it whenever you want. One key starts and stops dictation; which key it is, is yours.
Does it work without the internet, the way Dragon did?
Yes. The speech engine ships inside the app, so there is no upload and no server to reach. Unplug the router and it behaves exactly the same.
Free for 3 days, everything unlocked. Then $15 once. macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon.