How to dictate in Japanese on your Mac

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

Apple lists Japanese (Japan) for Dictation, for its “On-Device and Modeless Dictation” (so it can run with no connection once set up), and for Auto-punctuation, which puts in the punctuation for you. Keyboard settings say under Dictation whether your speech is processed on the Mac. For the basics, see how to dictate on a Mac.

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 switch by itself, so each change of language is a click.

You don't need the Japanese input source on to dictate Japanese. Dictation writes the kanji and kana itself, so you can leave your keyboard on English while you talk.

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. One thing to know first: the speech model built into Koi, NVIDIA's Parakeet v3, covers 25 European languages and not Japanese. For Japanese you download one of Koi's other models, once, from Settings. After that, it all runs on the Mac.

1. Install Koi and go through its short welcome.
2. Open Koi's Settings, go to Dictation, and pick a model that knows Japanese (the list below). It downloads once; the one in use keeps working until it's done.
3. Under Language, leave Auto-detect if the model finds the language itself, or pick Japanese.
4. Click where the words should go, in any app, and tap Fn + ⌥ once.
5. Speak Japanese. Go quiet and Koi stops by itself, or tap Fn + ⌥ again.

Koi puts each dictation into the field as text, the way a paste would, so the Japanese input source doesn't need to be on here either. Koi runs on macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon and Intel, and dictation never goes online. More on the dictation page.

Four of Koi's downloadable model families list Japanese, each on its maker's own page. All are free downloads.

We haven't measured any of them in Japanese, so we won't rank them. A fair way to choose: start with Whisper Large v3 Turbo, then try Qwen3-ASR or Cohere Transcribe on the same paragraph and keep whichever needs fewer fixes. The bigger models run best on Apple silicon; on an older Intel Mac, Whisper Small is the safer pick. The sources are Qwen3-ASR, Cohere Transcribe and Granite Speech 4.1 on Hugging Face, and our post on all seven.

• Works: Your words (names spelled your way), the names read from your screen as you start, and a style for each app.
• Fillers stay: Koi's tidying drops sounds like “um” and “uh”, but Japanese fillers like えーと and あの aren't on its list, so they're typed as heard.
• Snippets as their own sentence: a snippet is typed when its phrase stands apart from the words round it. Japanese has no spaces, so say the phrase as a sentence of its own, with a pause before and after.
• English only: spoken corrections (“at 3, no, 4”) and the commands “new line”, “new paragraph” and “clear all”.
• Mixing: we haven't tested Japanese and English in one sentence. Try a few of your own first.

To teach Koi the names you use, see our guide to adding words.

With Whisper Base, Whisper Small or Granite Speech picked, Koi shows a Type in English switch: you speak Japanese and the words are typed in English, in any app, still on the Mac. IBM lists Japanese to English among Granite's speech translations. Treat the result as a draft and read it before you send it. Our guide to speaking any language and typing in English has the steps.

On a recorded call, Koi can show what the others say at the bottom of your screen in Japanese, with their own words under it. Turn on “Live captions in my language” in Settings, under Koi, and pick Japanese. It needs macOS 26 or later, and Apple's Translation does it on your Mac. The captions never show in a screen you share. See the live captions page.

• You dictate Japanese now and then: Apple Dictation. It's free, on-device and adds punctuation.
• You move between Japanese and English in the same apps all day: Koi with Whisper Large v3 Turbo or Qwen3-ASR, which find the language themselves.
• You want Japanese speech typed in English: Koi with Whisper Small or Granite Speech and Type in English.
• You also want Japanese calls recorded and transcribed: Koi's Record calls and Transcribe use the model you pick.

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 Transcribe page for files, and our guide to fixing Mac dictation if Apple's shortcut does nothing.