If you dictate more than you type, you have probably met Voice In, Dictanote’s voice typing extension: 600,000 users and 4.4 stars on the Chrome Web Store in July 2026. Unlike a dictation notepad you copy out of, it types straight into the field you are already in, so the limit is not copy-paste, it is the edge of the browser.
What Voice In does well
Voice In does one job broadly: voice typing into website text fields, over 10,000 sites by its own count, in 50+ languages. Custom voice commands, in the paid Plus tier, are its best idea. You map a spoken phrase to another phrase or an action, which pays off fast on repetitive data entry and canned replies.
It also travels further than anything built for one operating system: Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS, wherever Chrome runs.
Where the browser window ends
Voice In runs on Chrome and Microsoft Edge only. Its own docs rule out other browsers, Firefox and Brave included, because the speech features it relies on are unavailable there, and there is no desktop app. The moment your writing moves to a desktop mail client, the Slack app or a native editor, dictation stops.
That is the gap Dictato fills on macOS: it types into whatever app is frontmost, with no list of supported apps to check. Grant the Accessibility permission once and the target is simply the window you are in.
Dictato also cleans each dictation by fixed rules: fillers stripped, spoken numbers, dates and currency written out the same way every time (that rules-based pass is English and French only, while dictation itself covers 30 languages with automatic detection). Commas, capitalization and paragraph breaks are different. Those come from on-device AI, only after you turn on Auto-correct or a per-app profile (a beta feature), and rewrites need reviewing.
Reading the privacy promise
Voice In states it does not send your audio or transcript to its servers, and does not store them. Take that at face value, and note its scope: it is a promise about Voice In’s own servers. Recognition itself is handled by the browser’s speech service, so that step falls under the browser vendor’s policy, and Voice In states it needs an internet connection and does not work offline.
Dictato takes the other route. Recognition and the optional AI pass run on your Mac, so no audio and no transcript leave it. No account, no sign-in: a license is a key stored locally. A connection is needed at three moments only, the one-time model download, starting the trial, and activating the license. Our privacy guide covers what to ask any dictation tool.
The cost shape
Voice In’s free tier gives 60 minutes of dictation a day. Voice In Plus was listed in July 2026 at $9.99 monthly or $59.99 billed yearly, with a 5-day trial and an account required to upgrade. Dictato is 19.99 EUR, paid once, lifetime, no subscription, with a 7-day trial. Over a few years, the shape of the bill matters more than the sticker price.
Which one fits you
If you work across Windows or ChromeOS, or your writing lives inside Chrome, Voice In is the better fit. If your writing spans native Mac apps and you would rather pay once and keep your voice on your machine, Dictato fits, on macOS 14 or later with Apple Silicon.