Google Docs has built-in voice typing (Tools → Voice typing), and it's genuinely useful — right up until you switch tabs. It only works inside a Google Doc, only in Chrome, needs an active internet connection, and stops the moment you click into Mail or Slack to answer something. If you want voice typing on your Mac that works in every app, not one browser tab, here's the alternative.
What Google Docs voice typing actually covers
It's a browser feature scoped to the Docs editor: open a document, turn on the microphone from the Tools menu, and speak. It doesn't follow you into Sheets, Slides, Mail, your terminal, or any app outside that one tab — and because it depends on Google's speech service, it needs an internet connection to work at all.
The alternative: one hotkey, every app
igooor sits in your Mac's menu bar and binds voice typing to a single hotkey, system-wide. Press it in Mail, Slack, your code editor, a PDF form, Google Docs itself, or any other app with a text cursor, and your words land there directly — no switching to a special tab or browser extension first.
How it works
Tap your hotkey to dictate hands-free, or hold it to talk — then release, and the transcribed text is pasted right at your cursor. It happens entirely on your Mac, so unlike Google's version, it keeps working with no internet connection at all once it's set up, and nothing you say is sent to a server to get it back as text.
Beyond plain dictation
igooor also auto-detects the language you're speaking, can translate what you say directly into another language as you dictate, and tidies up filler words and rough edges automatically — none of which Google Docs' voice typing does. It also keeps a local, searchable history of everything you've dictated, on your Mac only.
What about transcribing a recording instead of dictating live?
Different task, same engine — if you've already got an audio file rather than something you want to say out loud right now, see how to transcribe audio to text on Mac.