Mac Dictation Not Working in Substack? 10 Fixes That Work

Short answer: If Mac dictation is not working in Substack, open the draft and click in the body of the post until the cursor blinks before you speak. Substack on a Mac is a web page with no voice typing of its own, so your words go wherever keyboard focus is.

The issue goes out on Thursday morning, the draft is open in a browser tab, and saying the first version is quicker than typing it. You press your dictation shortcut, speak a paragraph, and nothing appears. Or the whole paragraph turns up in the title, which is also the subject line of the email. Or a sentence that was meant to be plain text arrives as a numbered list, and the next three paragraphs join it. Or the words went in perfectly, and a reader on the free list writes to ask where the second half of the post is.

Four facts about Substack on a Mac explain almost all of it. First, on a Mac you write Substack in a browser, and the editor has no voice typing of its own, so dictation comes from macOS or from a dictation app, and both deliver text to whatever has keyboard focus, exactly as if you had typed it. Second, a draft is not one text box. It has a title, a subtitle and a body, plus captions, footnotes, button labels and small pop-up fields, and each of them is a separate place for words to land. Third, the body is a rich-text editor that reacts to what is typed: Return starts a new paragraph, and certain characters at the start of a line turn into formatting. Fourth, a draft saves by itself, but publishing is a separate and deliberate step, and an email that has been sent cannot be called back.

So most Substack dictation problems on a Mac are about where focus was when you spoke and what the editor did with the text, not about your microphone. This guide works through every cause in order, starting with the most common one. If dictation is failing in every app on your Mac and not only in Substack, start with our complete guide to Mac dictation not working instead. Substack updates its editor regularly, so exact button names and positions may differ a little from what you see on your screen.

First, where in Substack are you?

On a Mac, writing in Substack happens in several places, and each one handles text a little differently.

• The post editor. The page with a title, a subtitle and the body of the post, with a toolbar across the top. Most long dictation happens here, and most of this guide is about it.
• The Notes composer. Notes is Substack's short-form feed. Writing a note opens a small box of its own, with its own Post button.
• Comments, replies and chat. The box under a post, a reply to a reader, a message in your publication's chat or a direct message. Each has its own field and its own button to send.
• Dashboard and settings pages. The publication's name and description, the About page and the welcome email. These are ordinary web forms, with fields of fixed kinds.

Then there is the question of which publication. One Substack account can write for more than one publication, and each keeps its own drafts. The same pages can also be open in a normal browser tab or in a window that Safari or Chrome has installed as an app, with its own icon in the Dock. That window looks like a Mac app, but it is the same website, and macOS treats it as a separate app from your browser, with its own place in the app switcher. Knowing which window and which publication you are in settles a good share of the confusion below.

How dictation reaches Substack on a Mac

Apple dictation is built into macOS. You start it with the dictation shortcut, usually the microphone key or whichever shortcut is set in System Settings under Keyboard, or from Edit, then Start Dictation in your browser's menu bar. It sends its text to whichever field has keyboard focus. Substack does not need microphone permission for that, because it is your Mac that is listening, not the web page.

Menu bar dictation apps, including ours, look much the same from Substack's side. They put text at your cursor, and many of them deliver it the way a paste does. They need their own Microphone permission, plus Accessibility permission to put text into other apps, under System Settings, then Privacy & Security. Neither Substack nor your browser needs anything extra, and there is no extension to install.

One point causes a lot of wasted searching. The editor's toolbar has buttons for adding audio and video to a post, and at the time of writing Substack can record a voiceover for readers to listen to. Those record sound for the post. They do not type. Substack can also attach a transcript to an audio or video post, and that transcript belongs to the episode, not to the text of your draft. If your browser asks whether Substack may use the microphone, the request comes from one of those recording features. Dictation does not need it.

That leaves one rule to remember: dictated text goes to whatever has focus, and Substack treats it exactly like typing. A sentence in the body is a sentence. The same sentence in the title is your subject line, and in a link box it is a web address that leads nowhere.

The 30-second TextEdit test

Before you change anything, open TextEdit, create a blank document, start dictation and say a sentence. Then go back to Substack, open a draft, click in the middle of a paragraph in the body so the cursor blinks there, and dictate the same sentence.

• If nothing appears in TextEdit either, the problem is dictation on your Mac, not Substack. Go to fix 10.
• If TextEdit works but nothing appears in Substack, go to fixes 1 and 9.
• If your words appeared in the title or the subtitle, go to fix 2.
• If your words appeared in a pop-up, a caption or a search box, go to fix 3.
• If your text turned into a heading, a list or a quote, or split into odd pieces, go to fix 4.
• If you cannot find the draft you dictated into, go to fix 5.
• If the page will not take any text at all, go to fix 6.
• If your words were there and are gone now, go to fix 7.
• If readers saw less than you wrote, or saw a mistake you have since corrected, go to fix 8.

Command-Z works in the editor. If a paragraph lands somewhere it should not, undo it before you try to repair it by hand.

The 10 fixes, in order

1. Open the draft and click in the body until the cursor blinks

This is the cause behind most "dictation does nothing in Substack" reports. Much of what you look at in Substack cannot be edited. The dashboard is a page of figures and lists. The Posts page lists drafts, scheduled posts and published ones, and a row in that list is something you click to open, not something you type into. A published post on your publication's site is a page for reading, even when you are signed in as its author. To change it, open it for editing from the dashboard or from the post's own edit option.

Preview is the same. The editor can show you the post as readers will see it, and that view looks very like the editor with the toolbar missing. Nothing can be typed there. Close the preview to go back to the draft.

Inside the editor, clicking is not always the same as placing a cursor. Clicking an image selects the image. Clicking a button, a divider or an embedded post selects that item. Scrolling does not move focus at all, so a paragraph you have scrolled to is not a paragraph you are in. Click in a line of text in the body, or in the empty line where the next paragraph will go, and look for the blinking insertion point before you speak.

2. Keep your paragraph out of the title and subtitle

A new draft usually opens with the cursor in the title, because that is the first thing Substack expects you to write. Start speaking the moment the page loads and your opening paragraph becomes a title several lines long. It matters more here than in most editors. The title is what subscribers see as the subject line of the email unless you set a different one, and the subtitle is typically used as the short description that appears with the post when it is shared.

Both are fields of their own, not part of the body. If a paragraph ends up in either, select it, cut it with Command-X, click in the body and paste it with Command-V. Then write the title by hand. A title is short and exact, and it is worth the ten seconds.

If your dictation included a line break, the first part can end up in one field and the rest in the field below it. Read the title, the subtitle and the first lines of the body before you move on.

3. Close pop-up fields first

The editor opens small text fields on top of your draft, and each of them will take every word you say.

• The link box. Adding a link opens a small field for a web address. A sentence dictated there becomes the address, and the link goes nowhere.
• Button text and address. Inserting a custom button asks for the words on the button and the address it opens. Neither wants a paragraph.
• Captions and alternative text. Clicking under an image puts the cursor in its caption, which is a field of its own, and the image's alternative text is edited in a separate box. Both accept sentences, so nothing looks wrong until you notice a paragraph sitting under a photograph.
• Footnotes. Adding a footnote moves the cursor into the footnote's own text, away from the paragraph you were in. Carry on dictating and the rest of your section becomes one very long footnote.
• Polls and other inserts. A poll has a question and a set of answers, each a short field.
• The settings panel. A post's settings hold fields such as the ending of its web address and the text used when it is shared. A paragraph does not belong in any of them.
• Search and the browser. Substack's search box is a real text field. So are the browser's Find bar, after Command-F, and its address bar, after Command-L.

In every one of these cases dictation worked. It filled in the wrong box. Close the pop-up, click back in the body, check for the cursor and speak again.

4. Know what Return and line-start characters do

The body is not a plain text box, and it does things with typed text that TextEdit does not.

Return starts a new paragraph. Each paragraph is its own block of text with space around it. If your dictation tool delivers several lines at once, or you say "new line" in the middle of a thought, one thought becomes two or three short paragraphs. That is easy to repair: put the cursor at the start of the stray paragraph and press Delete to join it to the one before.

Some characters turn into formatting. Like many modern editors, Substack's recognises a handful of typing shortcuts in the Markdown style. A line that starts with a hash sign and a space can become a heading. A line that starts with a hyphen and a space can become a bullet point, a number followed by a full stop and a space can start a numbered list, and a greater-than sign can start a block quote. Dictation rarely writes a hash sign, but it does write numbers, so "1. The first reason" at the start of a line can open a numbered list that every later paragraph then joins. If the formatting appears the instant the text lands, pressing Command-Z straight away usually turns it back into the characters themselves.

How much of this you see depends on how your dictation tool delivers text. Text that arrives as keystrokes can trigger these shortcuts, and text that arrives as a paste usually does not.

Formatting carries on. If the cursor is inside a heading, a block quote, a list or a run of bold text when you speak, your words take on that formatting. This is the usual reason a dictated paragraph arrives in large type. Put the cursor in an ordinary paragraph first, or select the text afterwards and set it back to normal text from the style menu in the toolbar. To leave a list or a quote, press Return on an empty line, which in most cases drops you back into a normal paragraph.

5. Check which publication and which draft

Substack keeps a draft from the moment you start a new post and type anything, before it has a proper title. Start a new post a few times over a week and the drafts list fills with entries that look alike. "My dictation disappeared" is quite often "my dictation is in a different untitled draft from the one I opened today". Open the list of drafts, look at the ones edited most recently and check each of them before you assume the words are gone.

Publications are the other half. If your account writes for more than one publication, your own and a shared one, say, the dashboard shows one at a time, and each has a separate list of drafts. A bookmark or a link in an email can open either. Check the publication's name at the top of the dashboard before you start a long piece, and when a draft seems to be missing, switch publication and look there.

Browser profiles add one more layer. If you are signed in to different Substack accounts in different browsers or profiles, or in an installed web app that was created from one of them, each window shows that account's drafts only.

6. Make sure the post can be edited

Sometimes the page is in front of you and will not take text.

• A role that cannot edit. On a publication with several writers, what you can change depends on the role the owner has given you. If you can open a post but not alter it, ask the owner or an admin to check your access.
• A draft someone else has open. Two people editing the same draft at the same moment can overwrite each other. If a co-writer has the draft open, agree who is editing before you dictate a long section.
• A published or scheduled post. A post that has gone out can still be edited, but you edit it from the dashboard, not from the public page, and your changes are not live until you confirm the update with the button the editor shows for it.
• Things that are not text. An image, a video, a divider, a subscribe button and an embedded post are objects in the body, not places to type. Click in a paragraph above or below them.

The check is always the same. If no cursor is blinking in a line of text, there is nowhere for dictated words to go.

7. Let the draft save, and keep an eye on the connection

Substack saves a draft as you write, and the editor shows whether your latest changes have been saved. That removes the most common way of losing work in web tools, but a few cases still look like lost dictation.

• A tab that lost its connection. If the Wi-Fi dropped, or the Mac has just woken from sleep, the page may not be able to save what you add. If the draft has been sitting in a background tab for hours, reload it before a long dictation. If the editor reports that it cannot save, copy your text somewhere safe before you reload.
• The same draft open twice. A draft open in two tabs, or on your Mac and your phone, exists in two copies, and the one that saves last can replace the other. Close the extra one.
• Text that was replaced. Dictation replaces selected text, just as typing does. If a word or a paragraph was highlighted when you spoke, what you said took its place. Undo straight away, then click once where you want the new words so that nothing is highlighted.
• A reload in the middle of a section. Reloading the page, or a browser update that restarts the browser, brings the draft back as it was last saved, which may be a sentence or two behind where you were.

If the editor offers a version history for the draft, it can show you earlier states of the text, which is the quickest way back from a mix-up you noticed too late for undo. For anything long, an old habit is still worth keeping: when a section is finished, select it and copy it before you move on.

8. Mind the paywall line, and what has already been sent

Two parts of Substack make correct dictation look as if it went missing. Both are about who sees the words, not about whether they were written.

The paywall line. A post for paying subscribers can carry a paywall marker part of the way down. Everything above it is shown to everyone, and everything below it only to people who pay. If you dictate a new section below that line, free readers will not see it, and if you check the post in a window where you are signed out, neither will you. Move the marker or move the section.

The email that has gone. Publishing a post normally sends it to subscribers by email. That email is a copy made at the moment you sent it. If you find a misheard word afterwards and correct it, the page on the web changes and the email in your readers' inboxes does not. So the time to read a dictated post is before you publish it. Use the preview, or send yourself a test email, and read names, numbers and dates with care, because those are the words dictation is most likely to get subtly wrong.

The same goes, on a smaller scale, for everything with a send button. A note is public when you click Post. A comment, a reply and a chat message are visible the moment they are sent. Read them back first.

9. Sign back in when Substack asks, and clear Secure Input

Substack signs you in with a link sent to your email address or with a password, and it can ask you to sign in again when a session has run out. If that page is in front of you while your eyes are on your notes, a dictated paragraph goes nowhere, because the page is waiting for an email address or a password.

There is a second effect for dictation apps. While a password field is active, macOS uses Secure Input, which stops other apps from reading or sending keystrokes. A dictation app may not see its hotkey, or may not be able to deliver its text, for as long as the cursor sits in that password box. A password manager prompt can have the same effect. Sign in, let the editor load again, click back into your draft and try once more. If your hotkey stopped working in every app just after you typed a password somewhere, look for a password field still waiting in another window and close it.

10. Rule out the browser, then check dictation on your Mac

Substack runs in a browser, so the browser is part of the problem space. Open your draft in a private window, or in a different browser, and dictate there. If it works, something in your everyday browser profile is interfering.

Extensions are the usual suspects. Writing assistants and grammar checkers attach themselves to editable text, and they can reposition the cursor or rewrite text as it arrives. Disable extensions one at a time until dictation behaves. Our guides to Mac dictation not working in Chrome and in Safari cover the browser-specific causes.

If you use a dictation app, check its two permissions under System Settings, then Privacy & Security: Microphone, so it can hear you, and Accessibility, so it can put text into your browser. After you grant a permission, quit the app and open it again. If your dictation shortcut matches a browser shortcut, the browser may act on it first, and our guide to a Mac dictation shortcut that is not working walks through finding conflicts.

If dictation failed in TextEdit too, Substack is not the problem. Open System Settings, go to Keyboard, and make sure Dictation is on. Check which shortcut it uses and that the dictation language matches the language you are speaking. Check the microphone as well: a video call or a screen recorder can keep hold of it, and a headset that was unplugged can leave your Mac listening to the wrong input. Then restart your Mac, which clears stuck dictation services in one step.

Substack quirks that look like broken dictation

• A pasted link became a card. Paste a web address on a line of its own and Substack may turn it into an embedded preview. That is display, not extra text in your post.
• An at sign opened a list of names. An at sign in the body starts a mention, and a small list of people and publications can appear under the cursor. Carry on speaking, or press Escape to dismiss it.
• The page jumped when you spoke. With no cursor in a text field, a space scrolls a web page. If the page moves when your dictation arrives, the text had nowhere to go. See fix 1.
• The web address still carries old words. A post's address is based on its title. If a stray paragraph was sitting in the title when the post was published, the address may keep those words after you correct the title. Check the post's settings.
• The email looks different from the page. Mail apps apply their own fonts, widths and dark mode. That is styling, not dictation.
• Several paragraphs arrived as one block. Spoken text comes as one run unless you break it up. Say "new paragraph" where your dictation tool supports it, or add the breaks by hand before you publish.
• Holding your hotkey and clicking opened a new tab. In a browser, clicking a link with the Command key held down opens it in a new tab. If your dictation hotkey is a modifier key, click to place the cursor first, then hold the key.

Quick triage

• Works in TextEdit, nothing in Substack: no cursor in the body, or you are looking at a preview or a published page. Fix 1.
• Your paragraph is the title: the title had focus. Fix 2.
• Your words are under an image or in a footnote: a caption or a footnote had the cursor. Fix 3.
• A link goes nowhere: your sentence went into the link box. Fix 3.
• Plain text became a list, a heading or a quote: a line-start shortcut, or the cursor was in formatted text. Fix 4.
• One thought became three paragraphs: Return starts a new paragraph. Fix 4.
• The draft you dictated into is missing: another untitled draft, or the other publication. Fix 5.
• The post opens but nothing can be changed: your role, a preview or a public page. Fix 6.
• Words were there and are gone: a lost connection, a second tab or replaced text. Fix 7.
• Free readers did not see a section: it is below the paywall line. Fix 8.
• The email has the old wording: it was sent before you corrected the post. Fix 8.
• A sign-in page appeared, or the hotkey went dead after a password: Secure Input. Fix 9.
• Works in a private window only: an extension. Fix 10.
• Fails in TextEdit too: Mac dictation settings. Fix 10.

Substack on a Mac versus on iPhone

Plenty of writers catch ideas on the phone and write the issue at a desk, and dictation behaves differently on each. On iPhone, Substack is an app, the mic that types lives on the keyboard, and the first question is always whether the keyboard appeared. If that is where you are stuck, start with our guide to iPhone dictation not working. On a Mac there is no keyboard on screen to look for. A shortcut or a hotkey types wherever the cursor is, so the question is always where the cursor is.

The same principle carries over to other publishing tools, with different details. If you also run a blog, our guide to Mac dictation not working in WordPress covers the block editor, where every paragraph is a separate block and the traps are a little different.

A dictation workflow that suits a newsletter

1. Give the draft a window of its own. A full window makes it obvious where the cursor is, and keeps your notes and your inbox from taking focus.
2. Type a working title first. It moves the cursor's starting point out of the way, and it gives the draft a name you can find again in the list.
3. Click in the body and check for the cursor. No cursor, no dictation.
4. Dictate one section at a time. Speak in full sentences, the way you would explain the idea to a friend, and glance at the screen at the end of each section.
5. Add structure by hand afterwards. Headings, links, buttons, images and the paywall line are decisions for your eyes and your mouse.
6. Preview it, or send yourself a test. Read names, numbers and dates, then publish.

It is worth getting right, because speaking is much faster than typing. Most adults type around 40 words per minute, and even professional typists usually sit around 80 to 100, while normal speech runs at 130 to 150 words per minute. A weekly newsletter is mostly sentences, and sentences are the part of the job where that gap pays off. Our guide on how to dictate in Substack covers the day-to-day workflow on both Mac and iPhone once everything is working, and our piece on voice typing for Substack writers looks at keeping up a weekly schedule by voice.

One hotkey for every draft

Apple dictation is free and built in, but it can stop listening when you pause to think, it depends on settings that are easy to switch off by accident, and fixing a misheard word means going back and editing by hand.

Voice Keyboard Pro is a menu bar app for Mac. Click where you want the text, hold your hotkey, speak, and release. The text appears at your cursor, system-wide, in a Substack draft, in a note, in your email and in every other app you use. The microphone stays live while you hold the key, so a pause to find the right word does not end the session. Like any dictation app, it puts text wherever focus is, and Substack still decides what that text means, so fixes 1 to 9 still apply.

A few features help with a newsletter in particular:

• Smart Vocabulary is a personal dictionary with replacement rules, so the names of the people, companies and products you write about every week come out spelled your way every time.
• Meeting Mode, with speaker detection and AI notes, captures an interview or a call, so the piece you write afterwards starts from what was actually said.
• Calendar meeting detection notices when a meeting on your calendar is about to start.

On privacy, our servers store only operational pings. No audio and no transcript content is stored, which matters when the draft is a paid post that has not been released yet. There is a free tier with daily limits, and Pro is $4.99 a month or $34.99 a year. On iPhone, the same product is a custom keyboard with a built-in mic button, so you can dictate in any iOS app, the Substack app included.

Frequently asked questions

Does Substack have voice typing on a Mac?

No. The Substack editor has no dictation button of its own. On a Mac you dictate with the dictation built into macOS or with a dictation app, and both deliver text to whichever field has keyboard focus.

Is there a Substack app for Mac?

At the time of writing, Substack's apps are made for phones and tablets, and on a Mac you write on the website. Safari and Chrome can install that site as an app-like window with its own Dock icon, but it is the same web page and behaves the same way with dictation.

Why does dictation work in TextEdit but not in Substack?

Almost always because there is no cursor in the body of the draft, or because focus is somewhere else, such as the title, a caption or a link box. Click in a line of text in the body until the cursor blinks, then speak.

Why did my paragraph end up in the title?

A new draft usually opens with the cursor in the title. Cut the paragraph, click in the body and paste it there, then write the title by hand, because the title is also the subject line of the email.

Why did my text turn into a list or a heading?

The editor turns certain characters at the start of a line into formatting, and text dictated inside a heading, a list or a quote takes on that formatting. Undo straight away, or set the text back to normal from the style menu.

Does my browser need microphone permission for Substack?

Not for Apple dictation or a menu bar dictation app, because your Mac or the app does the listening. A dictation app needs Microphone and Accessibility permission in System Settings. Substack only asks for the microphone for its own audio and video recording.

Can I fix a dictation mistake after the email has gone out?

On the web, yes: edit the post and confirm the update. In the email, no. The email is a copy made when it was sent, so read a dictated post in the preview or in a test email before you publish.

What to do next

Run the 30-second TextEdit test, then work through the fixes that match what you saw. For most people it is fix 1 or fix 2: there was no cursor in the body, or the words went into the title. If plain text keeps arriving as a list or a heading, it is fix 4. Whatever the cause, read the post in the preview before it goes out, because an email cannot be corrected once it is sent. And if you want dictation that works the same way in every draft and every app on your Mac, try Voice Keyboard Pro's free tier on your next issue.