Short answer: To dictate in iA Writer, place your cursor in the document, start a voice-to-text tool, and speak. On Mac, Voice Keyboard Pro lets you hold a hotkey and dictate directly into iA Writer. On iPhone, switch to a voice keyboard and tap its mic button.
iA Writer is built around a single idea: get words out of your head and onto the page without friction. The interface strips away toolbars, fonts, and formatting menus so nothing stands between you and your sentence. That philosophy pairs beautifully with voice. If the whole point of iA Writer is to remove obstacles between thought and text, then dictation is the logical next step — because the biggest obstacle of all is the speed of your fingers.
This guide covers every reliable way to dictate into iA Writer on both Mac and iPhone, where each method shines, where it falls short, and how to get first drafts flowing at the speed you actually think.
Why dictate into iA Writer at all?
iA Writer attracts a particular kind of writer: bloggers, essayists, novelists, journalists, and anyone who values plain Markdown over bloated word processors. These are people producing a lot of words, and the number that matters most to them is throughput — how much finished text exists at the end of a session.
Here is the arithmetic that makes voice compelling. The average adult types around 40 words per minute. A trained touch typist reaches 80 to 100. But nearly everyone speaks comfortably at 130 to 150 words per minute without any practice at all. When your goal is a messy first draft you will refine later, dictation is simply the faster tool. You can talk through a paragraph in the time it takes to type the first sentence.
There is a second benefit that iA Writer users tend to appreciate more than most: dictation keeps you in flow. When you type, part of your attention goes to mechanics — spelling, backspacing, hunting for keys. When you speak, that attention stays on the idea. The result is looser, more natural prose, which is exactly what a first draft should be. We wrote more about that effect in how voice typing improves first drafts.
Method 1: Dictate in iA Writer on Mac with Voice Keyboard Pro
iA Writer on Mac is a standard text editor, which means any system-wide dictation tool can type into it. Voice Keyboard Pro is a menu bar app built for exactly this. It does not care which app you are in — it inserts text wherever your cursor sits.
The workflow is:
- Open your document in iA Writer and click where you want the words to appear.
- Hold your Voice Keyboard Pro hotkey.
- Speak your sentence or paragraph.
- Release the hotkey. The transcribed text appears at your cursor in about a second.
Because it works at the cursor in any app, there is nothing to configure inside iA Writer itself. You are not pasting from another window or switching to a separate transcription app and copying text back. The words land directly in your draft, in the Markdown document you are already editing.
Three things make this approach fit iA Writer's minimalist spirit particularly well:
- It stays out of the way. Voice Keyboard Pro lives in the menu bar. There is no floating panel cluttering iA Writer's clean canvas, no window to manage. Hold, speak, release, done.
- It handles punctuation naturally. Say "comma," "period," or "new paragraph" and the transcription engine formats it correctly. You can dictate a fully punctuated paragraph without stopping to fix commas.
- Smart Vocabulary learns your words. If you write about niche subjects, name characters, or use industry jargon, you can add those terms to a personal dictionary with replacement rules so they transcribe correctly every time. A fantasy novelist's invented place names or a technical blogger's product names stop coming out as gibberish.
For a broader look at dictating across every Mac app, not just iA Writer, see our guide to dictating in any Mac app.
Method 2: Dictate in iA Writer on iPhone and iPad
iA Writer is also a first-class iOS app, and many writers capture ideas on their phone before finishing on the Mac. On iPhone, the cleanest way to dictate is a keyboard with a built-in microphone.
The Voice Keyboard Pro iPhone keyboard replaces your standard keyboard with one that has a dedicated mic button. Once installed, it works inside iA Writer exactly as it does everywhere else:
- Install the Voice Keyboard Pro app and enable its keyboard in Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards.
- Open iA Writer and tap into a document.
- Switch to the Voice Keyboard Pro keyboard using the globe key.
- Tap the mic button and speak. Your words appear in the document as you talk.
Because it is a keyboard rather than a separate app, you never leave iA Writer. You capture a thought on the train, dictate three paragraphs while walking, and open the same document on your Mac later. If you are new to third-party keyboards on iOS, our guide to the iPhone keyboard with a microphone walks through setup in detail.
Two iPhone-only features are worth calling out for iA Writer users:
- Voice Edit. Instead of tapping to reposition your cursor and retyping, you can speak a correction — for example, ask it to fix a specific word or rephrase a sentence — and the change is applied. On a small screen, this is far less fiddly than manual editing.
- Two-way translation. If you write in more than one language, you can dictate in one and have it appear in another, across 24 languages. Useful for bilingual bloggers drafting in iA Writer.
Method 3: Built-in Apple Dictation
Both macOS and iOS include Apple's own dictation, and it does work inside iA Writer. On Mac you trigger it with a keyboard shortcut (set in System Settings → Keyboard → Dictation); on iPhone you tap the mic on the standard keyboard.
It is free and already on your device, so it is a reasonable starting point. But writers who dictate seriously tend to run into its limits fast:
- On older macOS setups, dictation can cut off after a fixed window, forcing you to restart mid-thought. If you hit this, our fix for the Mac dictation 30-second limit may help.
- Accuracy drops with accents, background noise, and specialized vocabulary, and there is limited ability to teach it your own words.
- There is no personal dictionary with replacement rules, no speak-a-correction editing, and no built-in translation.
For occasional short bursts, Apple Dictation is fine. For drafting whole articles or chapters in iA Writer, a dedicated tool that keeps up with longer passages and learns your vocabulary will save a lot of cleanup.
A dictation-first workflow for iA Writer
Getting words on the page is only half the job. Here is a practical way to structure a session so voice does the heavy lifting and the keyboard handles precision.
1. Draft out loud, edit with your hands
Treat dictation as your drafting gear and typing as your editing gear. Speak the whole section first without stopping to fix anything. Resist the urge to correct as you go — momentum matters more than polish at this stage. Once the ideas are down, switch to the keyboard for line edits, where clicking exactly between two characters is faster than describing the change.
2. Speak your Markdown structure
iA Writer is a Markdown editor, and you can dictate structure as you talk. Say "new paragraph" between thoughts, and dictate punctuation so your sentences arrive formatted. For headings and lists, it is often fastest to speak the text, then add the Markdown symbols with a quick keyboard pass. Trying to dictate every hash mark and asterisk usually breaks your flow more than it helps.
3. Use focus mode and let your eyes rest
iA Writer's focus mode dims everything except the current sentence. Combined with dictation, this creates something unusual: you can compose while barely looking at the screen. Speak with your eyes half-closed, thinking about the argument rather than the letters. This is genuinely easier on your eyes over a long session, and it is a real ergonomic win if typing bothers your wrists. We cover that angle in RSI prevention with voice typing.
4. Capture on iPhone, finish on Mac
Because iA Writer syncs your documents, you can dictate rough notes into a file on your phone whenever an idea strikes, then open that same file on the Mac to shape it. The friction of "where did I write that down" disappears when capture is as easy as talking.
Common problems and fixes
The text lands in the wrong place
Dictated text always goes where the cursor is. If words appear somewhere unexpected, click into the document first to place the cursor, then dictate. On iPhone, make sure the keyboard is active in the iA Writer editing area and not in a search or title field.
Proper nouns come out wrong
Character names, place names, brand names, and jargon are the usual offenders. With Voice Keyboard Pro's Smart Vocabulary, add each troublesome term once with a replacement rule and it transcribes correctly from then on. This is the single biggest accuracy upgrade for fiction and technical writers. Our piece on custom vocabulary that learns your words goes deeper.
Long dictation gets cut off
If your tool stops partway through a paragraph, you are likely hitting a session limit in the built-in dictation. A tool designed for sustained drafting handles long passages without dropping out, so you can talk through an entire section in one take.
Punctuation is missing
Speak your punctuation explicitly. Say "comma," "period," "question mark," and "new paragraph" as you go. It feels odd for the first few minutes and becomes automatic quickly. For more, see our dictation tips for better accuracy.
iA Writer plus voice: the honest verdict
iA Writer already removed the visual clutter that slows writers down. Voice removes the physical bottleneck. Put them together and you have close to the shortest possible path from thought to finished paragraph: a clean canvas, a dimmed background, and words that appear as fast as you can say them.
You will still reach for the keyboard. Editing, restructuring, and precise formatting are keyboard work, and they always will be. But for the part that most writers find hardest — getting a first draft to exist at all — talking beats typing on nearly every measure that counts.
The blank page is intimidating because typing is slow enough to let doubt catch up. Dictation outruns the doubt.
Voice Keyboard Pro works on both the Mac (as a menu bar app) and the iPhone (as a keyboard with a mic button), and it has a free tier with daily limits so you can try dictating your next iA Writer draft before deciding. Pro is $4.99 a month or $34.99 a year if you want unlimited use. Open a fresh document, hold the hotkey, and just start talking. The first draft writes itself faster than you would believe.