Guides
How to dictate in Slack — without sending half a message
Slack is an ordinary text box as far as macOS is concerned, so any system-wide dictation app works in it with nothing installed. The only real hazard is that Enter sends.
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The basic workflow
- Click into the message box The channel box, a thread reply box or a direct message. Slack has several and they are all ordinary text fields.
- Hold the shortcut and speak Say the whole message. For Slack that is usually one or two sentences.
- Release and read it This is the step that saves you. Slack messages are public and permanent in a way email drafts are not.
- Press Enter Deliberately, after reading.
Threads, DMs and channels
No difference technically — all three are text fields — but there is a real difference in the read-back discipline they deserve. A DM to one colleague is forgiving. A message to a channel of two hundred people is not. Dictation makes it very easy to send more, faster, which is a genuine risk in a company-wide channel.
Formatting, and what to say out loud
| You want | Say / do |
|---|---|
| A new line | Shift+Enter, by hand — do not try to dictate it in Slack |
| A new paragraph | Shift+Enter twice |
| Bold or italic | Dictate the words, then select and use Cmd+B or Cmd+I |
| A bulleted list | Dictate the items, then select them and use Slack's list button |
| A code block | Type the triple backticks first, then dictate inside it |
| An emoji | Type the colon shortcode. Dictating "colon tada colon" rarely ends well |
| A mention | Type @ and pick from the list. The picker needs a real keystroke to open |
The general rule: dictate the words, use the keyboard for the structure. Anything that triggers a Slack interface element — @, #, :, / — wants a real keypress, because the picker opens on the keystroke rather than on the character appearing.
The slash-command trap
If a message starts with a forward slash, Slack treats it as a command. This bites people who dictate something like "slash and burn approach here" at the start of a line and watch Slack try to interpret it.
Easy fix: start the message with a word, or type a space first. It is only the first character of the message that matters.
Teaching it the words Slack is full of
Work chat is dense with proper nouns: colleagues, project code names, internal tools, customers. A general speech model has heard of none of them, which is why dictation feels less accurate in Slack than in email even though nothing has changed.
Twenty vocabulary entries covers a whole team. Add colleagues' names as you mis-say them for a week and the problem disappears. See building a dictation vocabulary.
Untaught
can you ask Sea Ron to look at the Cuba netties issue in Grafana before the retro
After twenty entries
Can you ask Ciarán to look at the Kubernetes issue in Grafana before the retro?
Where dictating in Slack is a bad idea
- In an open-plan office. Everyone can hear the message. Slack is often where the most candid things get said.
- When you are annoyed. Dictation removes the friction that typing provides, and typing friction has saved a lot of careers.
- Incident channels. Precision matters more than speed. Type the identifiers.
- Anything with a hostname, an ID or a version number. Type those.
Questions
Does Slack have built-in dictation?
Not its own on the Mac desktop app. macOS's system dictation works in it, as does any third-party system-wide app. There is nothing to install in Slack itself.
Can I dictate a Slack message on the phone?
Yes, with your phone's own keyboard dictation. VV is a Mac app and does not run on iOS.
How do I stop dictation sending my message early?
Two things: choose a dictation shortcut that is not near Enter, and set Slack to send with Cmd+Enter instead of Enter in Preferences → Advanced. That second setting removes the problem entirely.
Does dictating in Slack send my message anywhere else?
With an on-device app like VV, no — the audio is recognised on your Mac and the text is typed into Slack. With a cloud dictation app, the audio goes to that vendor before the words reach Slack.