How to dictate in German on your Mac

Apple Dictation takes German for free on every Mac. You add German 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 German (Germany), German (Austria) or German (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 German. Press Escape, the Microphone key or the shortcut to stop. Dictation also stops by itself after 30 seconds without speech.

The line under Dictation in Keyboard settings tells you whether your speech is processed on the Mac or sent to Apple. For the basics, shortcuts and commands, see how to dictate on a Mac.

Apple lists three versions of German for Dictation: Germany, Austria and Switzerland. All three are on Apple's “On-Device and Modeless Dictation” list, so once the speech model is downloaded they work without a connection.

Auto-punctuation, where the Mac adds commas, full stops and question marks for you, is listed for German (Germany) and German (Switzerland), not German (Austria). With the Austrian version you say punctuation out loud. If that bothers you more than the accent difference, try German (Germany) and see which gets your words right.

Apple can change these lists with each macOS, so its feature availability page is the one to trust. Keyboard settings show what your own Mac offers today.

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 detect the language for you: each switch is by hand.

If your team writes in English and your family in German, that's a click every time you change window. It adds up over a day of Slack, Mail and Teams.

We make Koi, so read this part with that in mind. Koi is a Mac app whose dictation types in any app, written on the Mac. Its built-in speech model, NVIDIA's Parakeet v3, knows 25 European languages including German, and works out by itself which one you're speaking. There's no language to switch and nothing extra to download.

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 German if German is all you speak.
3. Click where the words should go, in any app, and tap Fn + ⌥ once.
4. Speak German. 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 at all. 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 5.04% of words wrong on the FLEURS German test, for the original model. Koi runs a converted copy, and we haven't measured German ourselves. Try a few paragraphs of your own before you decide.

• Tidying: Tidy what I say (on to begin with) drops fillers like “äh” and “ähm”, turns “1. … 2. …” into a list and leaves the full stop off in chat apps. Up to Koi 1.13 it also drops “um”, which is a word in German (“um 3 Uhr”). The next update keeps it; until then, switch Tidy what I say off in Settings, under Dictation, when you dictate German.
• Your words: company names, product names and long compound terms can go in Your words, in Settings, under Dictation, and are spelled your way. See our guide to adding words.
• Snippets: save a phrase like “meine 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 German.
• Mixing: we haven't tested German and English inside one sentence, which happens a lot with English tech words. Try it on your own sentences.

No. Dictation writes ä, ö, ü and ß for you, so the keyboard layout you type with doesn't matter while you talk. That's one of the best reasons to dictate German on a Mac with an English keyboard: no hunting for Option-U to get an umlaut, no Option-S for ß.

Koi puts each dictation into the field as text, the way a paste would, so the letters arrive exactly as the model wrote them in Mail, Slack, Word or a browser, and your clipboard is put back afterwards. The same goes for the accents in names you borrow from other languages: Koi types what the model heard, and Your words fixes a spelling it keeps getting wrong.

You can switch models in Settings, under Dictation, each a free download. All of these list German: Whisper Base, Small and Large v3 Turbo (OpenAI), Qwen3-ASR (Alibaba), Cohere Transcribe and Granite Speech (IBM). Cohere and Granite need German picked rather than finding it themselves.

One warning for German: in Koi, Granite Speech writes without punctuation or capitals. In a language where every noun starts with a capital, that's a lot of fixing, so pick another model for German text you'll send.

Need English out of German speech? 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 explains it, and Koi's speech models compares all seven.

• English words in German text, or the other way round: check the language next to the cursor in Apple Dictation. In Koi, set Language to German instead of Auto-detect if short phrases keep landing in English.
• No punctuation with Apple Dictation: Auto-punctuation is in Keyboard settings, under Dictation, and isn't listed for German (Austria).
• German 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 email you're replying to comes out right.

If nothing happens at all when you press the shortcut, our guide to fixing Mac dictation goes through the usual causes.

Dictation is your words going out. Calls are the other way round. If you work in English but think in German, Koi can show what the others say on arecorded call at the bottom of your screen in German, with their own words under it. Turn on “Live captions in my language” in Settings, under Koi, and pick German. 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 German 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 German now and then, one language at a time: Apple Dictation. It's free and runs on the Mac for all three versions.
• You move between German and English all day: Koi, so the language is never picked by hand.
• You want German speech typed in English: Koi with Whisper Small and Type in English.
• You record German calls or meetings 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 German meeting comes out in German.