In some ways, 2025 was when AI dictation apps really took off. Dictation apps have been around for years, but in the past they’ve proved slow and inaccurate — unless you speak with particular accents and enunciate clearly.
But advances in large language models (LLMs) and speech-to-text models have helped improve the systems that can decipher speech better while retaining the context to format the text. And developers have built in features to automatically format text, remove filler words, and ignore fumbles to output text that would need fewer edits.
But with the soaring popularity of everything AI, there’s dozens of such apps on the market. So we’ve collated our pick of the best and most useful dictation apps his year.
Wispr Flow is a well-funded AI dictation app that lets you add custom words and instructions for dictation. It has native apps for MacOS, Windows and iOS, and an Android version is in the works.
The app lets you customize how its system transcribes your notes by letting you choose from “formal,” “casual,” and “very casual” styles for different kinds of writing, such as personal messaging, work, and email. And if you use it with vibe coding tools like Cursor, you can turn on a feature to automatically recognize variables or tag files in the chat.
The app lets you note down up to 2,000 words per month for free on any of the desktop versions, and 1,000 words per month on iOS. Its subscription plans offer unlimited transcription, and start at $15 per month.
Image Credits: Wispr Flow Image Credits:Wispr Flow
Willow advertises itself as a big time-saver for those who don’t like to type. Alongside common features like automatic editing and formatting, the app has a feature that taps large language models to generate a full chunk of text from just a few dictated words.
Willow also takes a more privacy-focused stab at AI-assisted note-taking by storing all transcripts locally on your device, and lets you opt out of model training as well. It also lets you add custom vocabulary to the app to help it adapt to your industry’s parlance, or your local dialect.
Image Credits: WIllow Image Credits:Willow
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