I've switched from typing to dictating and holy hell, I'm not sure I could ever go back.

After growing frustrated with macOS's built-in dictate feature, I (read: Claude) spent some time researching the options and I decided to try out VoiceInk as it's open-source and runs completely locally, which is a dealbreaker for me.

I'm fortunate enough to have a beefy MacBook Pro, and so I've been able to use the heaviest models without any speed issues and it's crazy how fast and accurate it is, Especially when directly compared to native macOS dictation.

My workflow has changed significantly as a result. I'm already working a lot more with Copilot than I used to, thanks to my current project at work, and now, rather than spending time crafting concise prompts, I find myself dictating my rambling thought process to Copilot and having it figure out what I want. I've actually found that it's resulted in better results, as my rambling is giving Copilot more context than it would have if I were to type (I'm lazy) so it ends up having a clearer understanding of what I'm trying to do, resulting in better decisions and output more closely aligned to what I actually want.

I already lean on LLMs quite heavily when writing things like personal reflections, internal docs at work, etc, and my workflow for that has always been very conversation-based. I'd tell the LLM-of-the-day what my goal is and ask it to interview me so that together we can build the bones of a document which contains everything I want to say, before then iterating to get it to a point at which I can rewrite and rephrase parts of it manually and add the finishing touches. That always involved a lot of thinking, typing, rephrasing to appropriately express precisely what I wanted to say.

Now though, I hit the transcribe key on my keyboard and open the flood gates. My initial prompt might be hundreds of words and many paragraphs long, but the LLM doesn't care.

I find that this approach better matches my way of thinking, compared to typing and refining. My yet-undiagnosed-but-I'm-pretty-sure-it's-there ADHD can make organising my thoughts tricky, and just being able to spew out 500 words and let an LLM figure it out helps me move faster. Maybe I could have said the same thing in 50 words, but that likely would have taken significantly longer.

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

Blaise Pascal

I do wonder whether, in the long term, this new workflow will hamper my ability to write concisely. Saying that though I don't think all writing is created equal. Writing this post for example is still a very manual and intentional process. Prompts written for LLMs, however, are inherently disposable. The specific language or formatting isn't relevant, the only thing that is relevant is whether all of my ideas and context are being communicated.

It's been a lot of fun experimenting with and unlocking this new way of interacting with my computer and it already makes me wish that I could use this on iOS as well.

Disclaimer: In sharing a link to VoiceInk I receive 30% off of a lifetime license. I was made aware of this promotion after having downloaded VoiceInk and used it for a week entirely of my own volition.