Short answer: Craft has no built-in dictation, but you can speak into any Craft block using a system-wide voice tool. On Mac with Voice Keyboard Pro, click into a block, hold the hotkey, and speak; on iPhone, tap into Craft and use the Voice Keyboard Pro keyboard's mic button.
Craft is one of the most beautiful note-taking and document apps on Apple platforms. Its block-based pages, clean typography, and fast sync make it a favorite for everything from daily notes to full project docs and personal wikis. But there is one thing Craft does not give you out of the box: a way to write by speaking. If you think faster than you type, or your hands need a break, dictating into Craft can change how you use it entirely.
This guide explains exactly how to dictate into Craft on both Mac and iPhone, why a system-wide voice tool is the right approach for a block editor like Craft, and the small set of habits that make spoken notes come out clean on the first pass.
Does Craft have built-in dictation?
Craft does not include its own voice-typing engine. Like most modern note apps, it is built around typing and block manipulation, and it relies on whatever text input you bring to it. That means the quality of your dictation experience depends entirely on the dictation tool you pair with Craft, not on Craft itself.
This is the same situation you find in apps like Bear, Notion, and Obsidian, and the solution is the same: use a dictation tool that operates at the system level and types into whatever block your cursor is in. Because Craft accepts text from any source, a good voice tool feels native even though it lives outside the app. If you already dictate into other note apps, the muscle memory carries straight over; our guides on dictating in Bear and Notion describe the same workflow in those tools.
How Craft's block model works with voice
Craft documents are made of blocks. Each paragraph, heading, to-do, toggle, or card is its own block, and you move between them with the cursor and the Enter key. This structure is genuinely friendly to dictation, because each spoken paragraph naturally becomes its own block.
When you dictate, your words fill the block your cursor sits in. Say a paragraph, press Enter to create a new block, and keep going. The result is a clean, well-separated document rather than one giant wall of text. For the structural elements that make Craft documents nice to read, like headings, to-do lists, and cards, the smart move is to dictate your raw text first and apply the block styling afterward using Craft's slash menu or formatting controls. Speaking content and structure at the same time slows everyone down; get the words out first, then shape them.
How to dictate in Craft on Mac
On the Mac, the best experience comes from a dictation tool that types at your cursor in any application, Craft included. Voice Keyboard Pro is built exactly for this. It lives in your menu bar, stays invisible until you need it, and inserts text wherever your cursor is blinking.
Here is the full workflow:
- Open your Craft document and click into the block where you want to write.
- Hold the Voice Keyboard Pro hotkey.
- Speak your note, sentence, or paragraph naturally.
- Release the hotkey. Your transcribed text appears in the block in under a second.
Because the text lands at your cursor, it respects the block you are in. Dictate a heading, press Enter, dictate three body paragraphs, then create a to-do block and speak your task list into it. There is no separate transcription window, no copy-paste, and nothing to switch away from. You stay inside Craft the whole time.
Voice Keyboard Pro's transcription engine adds natural punctuation as you speak, so saying "comma," "period," and "new paragraph" formats your note correctly on the fly. Just as importantly, it preserves your exact words. A note you will reread later should sound like you wrote it, not like a tool paraphrased it. Your phrasing comes through untouched.
How to dictate in Craft on iPhone and iPad
Craft is excellent on the go, and dictation is what makes mobile capture actually fast. With the Voice Keyboard Pro keyboard installed on your iPhone or iPad, you dictate into Craft the same way you would type:
- Open Craft and tap into the block or document you want to add to.
- Switch to the Voice Keyboard Pro keyboard using the globe key.
- Tap the built-in mic button and speak.
- Your words appear in the Craft block, with punctuation handled for you.
Because Voice Keyboard Pro is a full custom keyboard with a mic, it works inside Craft exactly the way it works in Notes, Mail, or any other iOS app. You can capture a meeting thought, a project idea, or a daily-note entry by voice while walking, then refine it on the Mac later. If you bounce between apps on your phone, the same keyboard works everywhere; our guide to dictating on iPhone in any app walks through it.
Craft makes your notes beautiful. Voice makes them appear at the speed you think, which is roughly three times faster than you type.
Three ways dictation changes how you use Craft
1. Daily notes stop feeling like a chore
If you keep a daily note in Craft, dictation lowers the friction to almost nothing. Instead of sitting down to type out the day, you talk through it: what happened, what is on your mind, what needs doing tomorrow. The note fills itself while you think out loud. Speaking is closer to how your memory actually works, so daily logs end up richer and more honest than the clipped bullet points you tend to type.
2. Meeting and call notes keep pace
Typing notes during a conversation means looking down and missing things. Dictation between thoughts, or right after the call ends while it is fresh, captures far more detail. You can speak a full recap into a Craft document in the time it would take to type two lines. For longer-form capture and structured meeting notes, you may also want our guide on dictation for meeting notes.
3. Long documents get drafted, not just outlined
Craft is good enough at typography that people write real documents in it: project briefs, proposals, research notes, even article drafts. Dictation is what gets the full draft down. Speak the whole thing into blocks, then go back and edit, restructure, and format. A draft that exists is worth far more than a perfect outline that never becomes prose.
Getting clean notes on the first pass
A few habits make dictated Craft notes need almost no cleanup:
- Speak in full thoughts. Dictation handles connected, natural sentences better than stop-start fragments. Say the whole idea, then pause.
- Use spoken punctuation. "Period," "comma," "new paragraph," "open quote," and "close quote" keep your formatting tidy without touching the keyboard.
- Capture first, format second. Get the words into blocks, then apply headings, to-dos, and cards in a separate pass.
- Teach it your vocabulary. On the Mac, Voice Keyboard Pro's Smart Vocabulary lets you add the names, terms, and acronyms you use constantly, with replacement rules, so they transcribe correctly every time. If your Craft docs are full of project names or domain jargon, this saves real editing time.
Is dictated content in Craft private?
Your notes are personal, and dictation should not change that. Voice Keyboard Pro does not store your audio or your transcribed text on its servers; the server handles only operational signals, never the content of what you say. The words go from your voice into your Craft document and nowhere else. If privacy is a priority for you, our overview of private voice-to-text on Mac covers what that means in practice.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a Craft plugin or extension?
No. A system-wide dictation tool sits entirely outside Craft, so there is nothing to install inside the app, nothing to break on a Craft update, and no extension to manage. It works in Craft today exactly as it works in every other app.
Will it work in Craft on both Mac and iPhone?
Yes. Voice Keyboard Pro has a Mac app and an iPhone keyboard, so you can dictate into Craft on your desktop and on your phone with a consistent experience across both. Your Craft sync handles getting the notes between devices; the dictation just fills them in.
How accurate is it for notes?
Modern dictation handles natural speech well, including accents and some background noise. Expect a light editing pass for the occasional misheard word, the same pass any quickly captured note benefits from. The time you save capturing far outweighs the small cleanup.
Can I edit a note by voice too?
On iPhone, Voice Keyboard Pro includes Voice Edit, which lets you speak a change to fix text you have already written instead of fiddling with the cursor on a small screen. It is handy for tidying a dictated note right after you capture it.
Start dictating into Craft today
Craft gives your notes a beautiful home. Pairing it with voice means filling that home at the speed you think instead of the speed you type. Click into a block on the Mac and hold a hotkey, or tap the mic on your iPhone keyboard, and your words appear where you want them, punctuation included, sounding like you.
Voice Keyboard Pro has a free tier on Mac and iPhone, so you can open your next Craft note and dictate it before deciding whether voice belongs in your workflow. Pro is $4.99 a month or $34.99 a year when you are ready to write everything by voice.