Dictate into Claude Code and Cursor.

Why talking suits prompting

A good prompt describes what you want: the goal, the files involved, what to leave alone, how you’ll know it worked. That takes a paragraph, and a paragraph is slow to type and quick to say. When typing is the cost, prompts get short and vague. When talking is, you give the context the agent needs.

You still read before you send. Dictation gets the words down; you check them and decide.

The loop

1. Click into Claude Code’s prompt, or Cursor’s chat.
2. Hold ⌘ Shift Space and talk. For a long prompt, double-tap it instead and keep talking hands-free.
3. Let go, or tap it once to stop hands-free. Noted pastes the text at your cursor.
4. Read it, fix anything, and press Enter yourself.

Lost the text, or clicked away too soon? ⌘ Shift L pastes your last dictation again.

Terminals: one line, on purpose

In a terminal, a line break can be read as Enter, and Enter runs what’s on the line. A dictation pasted as two paragraphs could send half a prompt, or run a command you meant to edit.

So in Terminal, iTerm2, VS Code, Cursor, Warp, Ghostty, Alacritty, kitty and WezTerm, every paste from Noted goes in on one line. In VS Code and Cursor that holds in the editor too, because Noted can’t tell their terminal panel from the editor. Nothing runs until you press Enter.

Two more things change in Terminal and iTerm2. Noted doesn’t read the text around your cursor there, so it won’t suggest Dictionary words from your corrections: add them by hand. And by default it keeps no dictation history from them.

Names and jargon: the Dictionary

Code is full of words speech recognition has never heard. The Dictionary holds “names and jargon, spelled the way you want them”. Add a word as you write it, or, for a word Noted hears differently, as said as -> Written:

• use effect -> useEffect
• pie torch -> PyTorch
• get user by id -> getUserById

Tidy-up and Cloud Polish

The basic tidy-up always runs. It drops “um”, “uh” and repeated words, with no network.

Cloud Polish is optional, and off by default. Sign in and turn it on in Settings › Dictation. It sends the text of a dictation, with your Dictionary words, to Noted’s servers and our AI providers to clean it up.

In a terminal or Cursor, also turn on Auto-polish: each dictation is polished before it’s pasted. In most other apps, ⌥1 polishes your last dictation. Polish uses cloud requests; the pricing says how many come with Free.

Tips

• Say what you want, not the syntax. Add a retry with backoff to the upload function works better than reading out brackets.
• Say file and function names slowly, once. If one comes out wrong, add it to the Dictionary and it comes out right more often.
• Talk in the order you’d explain it. The goal first, then the detail, then what not to touch.

FAQ

Does it work in Claude Code?

Yes. Claude Code runs in your terminal, and Noted pastes into any app with a text box. In the terminals listed above, the paste goes in on one line.

Does it work in Cursor’s chat?

Yes. Click into the chat, hold ⌘ Shift Space and talk. In Cursor every paste goes in on one line, in the chat and the editor alike.

Will a pasted line break run my command?

No. In the terminals listed above, and in VS Code and Cursor, Noted pastes on one line. Nothing is sent until you press Enter.

Can it spell my function names?

Add them to the Dictionary, as you write them or as said as -> Written.

Is dictation free?

Yes, dictation is free forever. Cloud Polish uses cloud requests; the pricing says how many come with Free.

Which Macs?

macOS 13 or later, on Apple silicon and Intel. Dictation works in 37 languages.

Noted also takes meeting notes from your computer’s audio, with no bot in the call: how that works.

Try it in your terminal: Noted Dictation.