How to dictate in French on your Mac

Apple Dictation takes French on every Mac, for free. You add French as a Dictation language once, then talk. These steps follow Apple's Dictation guide for macOS 27, and the language lists come from Apple's macOS feature availability page, both checked October 21, 2026.

1. Choose Apple menu > System Settings, then click Keyboard in the sidebar. You may need to scroll down.
2. Go to Dictation and turn it on. If a message appears, click Enable.
3. Click Edit next to Languages, select French (France), French (Canada), French (Belgium) or French (Switzerland), then click Done.
4. Click where the text should go, then press the Microphone key, your Dictation shortcut, or choose Edit > Start Dictation.
5. Speak French. Press Escape, the Microphone key or the shortcut to stop. Dictation also stops by itself after 30 seconds without speech.

Keyboard settings say under Dictation whether your speech is processed on the Mac or sent to Apple. For shortcuts and commands, see how to dictate on a Mac.

Apple lists four versions of French for Dictation: France, Canada, Belgium and Switzerland. All four are on its “On-Device and Modeless Dictation” list, so they work without a connection once the speech model is on your Mac, and all four are listed for Auto-punctuation, which puts in commas, full stops and question marks as you speak.

Pick the version you speak. If you're in Quebec, French (Canada) is Apple's version for Canada; in Brussels or Geneva, the Belgian or Swiss version. Apple doesn't list a version for French spoken in Africa, so pick whichever of the four gets your words right.

Apple can change these lists with any macOS update. Its feature availability page is the reference, and your Keyboard settings show what your Mac offers.

Add both under Languages. While Dictation is on, click the language shown next to the cursor and pick the other, or press the Globe key if your keyboard has one. Apple Dictation doesn't notice the change by itself: you switch by hand.

In Montreal, Brussels or anywhere work happens in English and life in French, that switch comes up many times a day. It's the main reason people look for something else.

We make Koi, so read this part with that in mind. Koi is a Mac app whose dictation types in any app, written on your Mac. The speech model built into it, NVIDIA's Parakeet v3, knows 25 European languages including French, and works out which one you're speaking by itself. Nothing to switch, nothing to download first.

1. Install Koi and go through its short welcome. Parakeet v3 is in use from the start.
2. In Koi's Settings, under Dictation, leave Language on Auto-detect, or pick French if French is all you speak.
3. Click where the words should go, in any app, and tap Fn + ⌥ once.
4. Speak French. The words appear as you talk.
5. Stop talking and Koi stops by itself, or tap Fn + ⌥ again.

The model runs on your Mac, so dictation never goes online and works with no connection. Koi runs on macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon and Intel. More on the dictation page.

On accuracy, NVIDIA's Parakeet v3 model card reports 5.15% of words wrong on the FLEURS French test, for the original model. It doesn't split French by country. Koi runs a converted copy and we haven't measured French ourselves, so try it on your own voice, especially with a Quebec or Belgian accent.

• Works in French: fillers like “euh” are dropped, a numbered list said as “1. … 2. …” becomes a list, and each app gets its style (no full stop at the end in chat apps).
• Your words: names, brands and terms in Your words, in Settings, under Dictation, are spelled your way. See our guide to adding words.
• Snippets: save a phrase like “mon adresse” and your address, and saying it types the address.
• English only: a correction said out loud (“at 3, no, 4”), spoken list words like “first” and “second”, and the commands “new line”, “new paragraph” and “clear all”. Koi doesn't take those in French.
• Franglais: we haven't tested French and English in one sentence. Try a few of your own before you rely on it.

Accents are no problem either way. Dictation writes é, è, à, ç and the rest, and Koi puts its words into the field as text, so they come out whatever keyboard layout you use.

You can switch models in Settings, under Dictation, each a free download. All of these list French: Whisper Base, Small and Large v3 Turbo (OpenAI), Qwen3-ASR (Alibaba), Cohere Transcribe and Granite Speech (IBM). Cohere and Granite need French picked rather than finding it themselves, and in Koi Granite writes without punctuation or capitals.

Speak French and need English? Whisper Base, Whisper Small and Granite Speech can type it in English with the Type in English switch. Our guide to speaking any language and typing in English covers it, and Koi's speech models compares all seven.

• English words where you said French: check the language next to the cursor in Apple Dictation. In Koi, set Language to French instead of Auto-detect if short phrases keep coming out in English.
• Lots of small mistakes with a Quebec or Belgian accent in Apple Dictation: make sure you picked French (Canada) or French (Belgium), not French (France).
• French comes out in English in Koi: Type in English is on. Turn it off in Settings, under Dictation.
• A name spelled wrong every time: add it to Your words in Koi. Koi also reads the names on your screen as you start, on the Mac, so a name in the message you're answering comes out right.

If the shortcut does nothing at all, see our guide to fixing Mac dictation.

Dictation is your words going out. Calls are the other way round. If you work in English but think in French, Koi can show what the others say on arecorded call at the bottom of your screen in French, with their own words under it. Turn on “Live captions in my language” in Settings, under Koi, and pick French. It needs macOS 26 or later.

The translation is done on your Mac by Apple's Translation, and the captions never show in a screen you share. If French isn't downloaded on your Mac yet, Settings offers it, and until then the words show as they were said. The live captions page has the details.

• You dictate French now and then, one language at a time: Apple Dictation. It's free, on-device and has a version for your country.
• You move between French and English all day: Koi, so the language is never picked by hand.
• You want French speech typed in English: Koi with Whisper Small and Type in English.
• You record French calls or lectures too: Koi's Record calls and Transcribe use the same model.

Koi needs a paid plan. Pro is $20 a month, or $192 a year, after a 3-day free trial that needs a card. Lifetime is paid once, from $59. Dictation is unlimited on every plan. See pricing. The same model writes down your recorded calls and the files you drop in, so a French meeting comes out in French.