What are the limits of Apple Dictation on Mac?

As it ships in macOS 26 it ends the session after thirty seconds of silence with no setting to change that, has no custom vocabulary, keeps no history you can search, does not clean up the shape of speech beyond punctuation and capitalisation, and cannot record the other side of a call.

Is it worth paying for a dictation app when Apple's is free?

If you dictate a message or two a week, no. Apple Dictation is free, on device and works in every app. Beam earns the money when you dictate all day: no silence cutoff, a vocabulary it learns, a searchable history, a local model that turns speech into written prose, and meetings captured on device.

Does Apple Dictation send my voice to Apple?

For supported languages it runs on device. Beam also runs on device, so on that particular question the two are alike, and this page does not claim otherwise.

Beam

Beam vs Apple Dictation

Compared September 7, 2026, against dictation as it ships in macOS 26.

The dictation built into your Mac stops at the transcript. It ends the session after thirty seconds of silence, has nowhere to learn your vocabulary, keeps no record, and leaves every false start where you said it. Beam begins where it stops, and runs on your Mac the same way.

Apple Dictation types what you said. Beam gives you back a finished piece of writing, and remembers that you wrote it.

Where Apple Dictation stops

It ends the session after thirty seconds of silence, and there is no setting to change that. Thinking mid-sentence costs you the session.
It has no custom vocabulary. Your colleagues' names, your firm's terms, your drug names, your ticker symbols: it will keep getting them wrong, and there is nowhere to teach it.
It keeps no record. Once the text is in the box it is gone. There is nothing to search, recover, or paste again.
It does not clean anything up. It punctuates and capitalises; the spoken false starts, the repeated words and the rambling shape of speech land exactly as you said them.
It cannot record a meeting. It hears your microphone, never the other side of a call.

Beam is free for fourteen days, no card, no account. Download it now and dictate the next long message into it instead.

The comparison, line by line

	Beam	Apple Dictation
Price	Free for fourteen days, then $5.99 a month or 2,000 words a week free	Free
Runs on device	Yes	Yes, for supported languages
Silence cutoff	None, you decide when it ends	Ends after thirty seconds, not adjustable
Custom vocabulary	Yes, learned from what you dictate and correct	No
Cleans up what you said	Yes, a local language model	Punctuation and capitalisation only
History you can search	Yes, as plain local files	None
Meetings, both sides	Yes, captured and summarised on device	No
Voice notes into a written page	Yes	No
Per-app behaviour	Yes	No
Works in any app	Yes	Yes

Beam leads with English, which runs on its fastest engine; other languages route to Whisper engines on the same Mac.

Reasons to choose Beam

You dictate for a living

Long-form, all day, in bursts longer than a sentence, with a pause to think in the middle that does not end the session.

Your words have specialist vocabulary

Names, drugs, statutes, tickers, product codes. Correct a word once and Beam's dictionary keeps it, on your disk.

You want the writing, not the transcript

A local language model turns the shape of speech into the shape of prose: false starts removed, sentences closed, formatting where it belongs.

Your meetings deserve the same

Beam captures both sides of a call, transcribes and summarises it on your Mac, and writes the page. Apple's dictation hears only you.

On device, at both steps

Apple built its dictation to run on your device, and so is Beam: neither sends your voice to a server. The difference is how far the on-device work goes. Apple's ends at the transcript. Beam's continues on the same Mac: the cleanup pass is a local language model, the meeting capture and summary run locally, the dictionary lives on your disk, and the history is plain files in your own Library folder. Pull the network cable and all of it keeps working. The trust page lists every network call Beam can make and shows you how to watch for them.

If you dictate more than a message or two a week, the thirty second cutoff and the vocabulary it cannot learn are why you searched for this page. Beam removes both, on your Mac, and after the trial the free tier of 2,000 words a week is yours for good.

Fourteen days of everything, free. Every engine, Meetings and Notes, no ceiling, no card, no account.

Download Beam

Apple silicon, macOS 14 or later. One click downloads the disk image; nothing to fill in. After the trial: 2,000 words a week free for good, or $5.99 a month. 30 day refund, renewals included.

All Mac dictation apps compared · Also compared: Beam vs Wispr Flow · Beam vs Superwhisper

Apple Dictation behaviour described as it ships in macOS 26: the thirty second silence cutoff with no adjustable setting, the absence of a custom vocabulary list, and the absence of a dictation history. Apple changes the built-in tools with each release; if any of this becomes wrong, write to [email protected] and we will correct it.