I think we're about to see a dictation revolution.

I've been coding with Claude, and I pretty much do it exclusively by voice now, simply because it's so much faster. And I kind of feel like Scotty from Star Trek IV, when he holds up a Mac mouse to try to talk into it.

I've been using VoiceInk [1] which looks like it's basically the same as this, but has been around for longer.

What has really made it work for me is using a Bluetooth media control like [2], where I use Karabiner Elements to remap its play/pause button to the dictation keyboard shortcut. I map rewind to option-backspace to delete the last word, fast-forward to shift-enter to insert a newline, a lower button to enter to submit my prompt, and the volume up/down buttons to scroll up/down. I've also just ordered to Xiaomi Bluetooth remote [3] that includes a microphone itself to see if I can get it to work by speaking directly into it and using it as the microphone -- there are a couple of open source projects to turn it into a Mac microphone directly. Since I'd like to be able to talk more quietly instead of into my Mac.

But what I'm REALLY waiting for is the ability to use one button for dictation, and a second button for issuing commands for a local LLM to interpret. So I hold down the voice button which transcribes "I think we need to catch that" and then the second button and go "change catch to cache, like c-a-c-h-e". Or hold down the second button and go "switch to VS code". I don't want something as finicky as macOS Voice Control, I want a local LLM I can speak naturally to.

I can very much see a future where I spend the majority of my "work" time using a Apple TV-type remote.

[1] https://github.com/Beingpax/VoiceInk

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Satechi-Bluetooth-Multimedia-Remote-C...

[3] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Xiaomi-Bluetooth-Remote-2-Pro-...

Show HN: BetterWispr – Free, open-source dictation for Mac