Productivity
Voice typing productivity: how much time you get back.
Most of us type for hours a day, at about 52 words a minute. Most of us talk two to three times faster. Here is what that difference is worth, how people use it, and how to get good at it.
Free in beta, then $10 a year. No account, no card. Mac with Apple silicon.
The numbers
In a study of 168,960 typists, the average speed was 52 words a minute (Dhakal and others, CHI 2018). In a 2016 Stanford study, speech recognition was about 3 times faster than typing on a phone, with fewer errors. Real dictation has pauses, so the estimate below starts at 130 words a minute for talking. Change any number to match you.
Your estimate
6 h back each week
You type about 6,240 words a day. Saying them takes 48 minutes instead of 2 hours.
About 288 hours a year, over 48 work weeks.
5 everyday examples
Examples of use, not customer quotes. Times use 52 words a minute typed and 130 talked.
Inbox
The 40-email morning
A small-business owner answers 40 emails of about 80 words each. Hold, answer in one breath, let go, next.
- Typed
- 62 min
- Talked
- 25 min
Legal
The note after the call
A lawyer dictates a 400-word file note right after a client call, while the details are fresh. The note stays on the Mac.
- Typed
- 8 min
- Talked
- 3 min
Clinic
The end-of-day charting
A clinician writes up 10 visits of about 150 words each, in the record system, before going home.
- Typed
- 29 min
- Talked
- 12 min
Code
The long prompt
A developer explains a bug to an AI coding agent in 300 words of context instead of a 30-word guess.
- Typed
- 6 min
- Talked
- 2 min
Writing
The morning pages
A writer talks through 750 words of first draft and journal before the day starts, offline, with nothing synced anywhere.
- Typed
- 14 min
- Talked
- 6 min
In the beta? Tell us how you use Talk2me, and we may share your story here, with your permission.
7 tips to dictate well
- Think in sentences, then talk. Take a breath, know where the sentence ends, then hold the keys.
- Talk at your normal pace. No need to slow down or spell things out. Speech models are trained on everyday speech.
- Pause when you need to. Stop, think, carry on. Talk2me keeps listening while you hold the keys.
- Talk the draft, type the fixes. Use your voice for the bulk of the text and the keyboard for small edits. That mix is the fastest.
- Teach it your words once. Add names, products and jargon to your personal dictionary, and they come out right every time.
- Turn on cleanup if you say "um". Optional cleanup removes fillers and fixes punctuation, on your Mac if you prefer.
- Start with low-stakes text. Chat messages and notes first, then email, then documents. A week of practice makes it a habit.
Where voice typing helps most
Big gains
Anything with full sentences: email, chat, notes, reports, documents, prompts for AI tools, code review comments, journals.
Smaller gains
Short edits, tables and code itself. Keep the keyboard for those, and talk for everything around them.
Questions
Is talking really faster than typing?
For most people, yes. The average typist does about 52 words a minute, and most people talk two to three times faster. In a Stanford study, speech was about 3 times faster than typing on a phone.
Will I need to fix a lot?
Some. Modern speech models are very accurate, and a personal dictionary fixes names and jargon. Most people talk the draft and type a few small fixes.
Can I dictate long text?
Yes. Talk for up to 10 minutes at a time. Talk2me decodes while you talk, so the text lands soon after you let go.
Does the speed cost me privacy?
No. Talk2me turns speech into text on your Mac. Your voice goes to no server, and we never train on it.
Sources
- Dhakal, Feit, Kristensson and Oulasvirta, Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes, CHI 2018: userinterfaces.aalto.fi.
- Stanford University, Smartphone speech recognition can write text messages three times faster than human typing, 24 August 2016: news.stanford.edu. All checked 15 October 2026.
Get your hours back. Keep your words private.
Join the free beta. We'll email your invite when a spot opens. No newsletter, no sharing.