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Dictation in Cursor

Voice dictation in Cursor for agent prompts, inline edits, and commit messages

Describing a change in plain English is faster spoken than typed. SnailText drops the text wherever your cursor is in Cursor, the Agent box, Cmd+K, comments, the terminal, and every other app you switch to.

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Mac & Windows · Works in any field · Nothing uploaded

AI dictation in Cursor, on your device

SnailText is AI dictation: a speech model turns your voice into text, then a second model cleans it up, dropping filler, fixing punctuation, and matching the style your work needs. Both models run on your own machine, so nothing you say in Cursor is uploaded for transcription. Press the hotkey, speak, and the finished text lands at your cursor.

Does Cursor have built-in dictation?

Cursor has a native hold-to-talk voice mode, but it only fills the Agent prompt input. It cannot dictate into Cmd+K, inline chat, comments, commit messages, or the editor itself. SnailText drops text wherever your cursor is, across every field in Cursor and every other app on your machine.

Speech to text in Cursor: how it works

SnailText does not plug into Cursor directly. It runs system-wide: a global hotkey (Option+Space (Mac) / Ctrl+Space (Windows), customizable) starts recording, the local speech-to-text engine (Whisper or Parakeet) transcribes what you said, and the text is pasted at your cursor through the system clipboard, the same way it lands when you type. That means it works in every Cursor field, plus every other app on your Mac or Windows machine, with no extension or integration to set up.

That matters in Cursor specifically: long, precise prompts to the Agent are where most of the typing goes, and the native voice mode only covers that one box. Speech to text removes that bottleneck without changing how you work in Cursor.

Voice to text in Cursor: what to dictate

Voice typing in Cursor is not limited to one box. Press the hotkey anywhere a cursor blinks and your speech becomes text, so the things you would normally type out by hand become things you just say.

  • · Agent and Composer prompts describing the change you want
  • · Cmd+K inline edit instructions
  • · Code comments, docstrings, and TODOs
  • · Commit messages and PR descriptions

Where typing slows you down in Cursor

  • · Long, precise prompts to the Agent are where most of the typing goes, and the native voice mode only covers that one box.
  • · Switching between Cmd+K, inline chat, comments, and the terminal means the built-in mic does not follow you.
  • · Describing a refactor in plain English is faster spoken, but only if the text lands in the field you are actually in.

Example dictations for Cursor

Agent prompt

"Refactor this component to use the new hooks API, extract the data fetching into a custom hook, and keep the existing prop types."

Inline edit

"Add error handling around the file read so it returns a typed result instead of throwing, and log failures with the existing tracer."

Docstring

"Write a docstring for this function explaining the retry logic and the timeout budget."

Cursor voice dictation FAQ

Does Cursor have built-in dictation?
Cursor has a native voice mode, but it only fills the Agent prompt box. It does not work in Cmd+K, inline chat, code comments, commit messages, or the editor. SnailText works system-wide, so dictation follows your cursor into every field in Cursor and beyond.
Can I dictate code comments and commit messages in Cursor?
Yes. Because SnailText inserts text at the OS level wherever your cursor is, you can dictate into comments, docstrings, the commit message box, and the terminal, not just the Agent prompt. Use the Development topic profile to restore code identifiers in your chosen style.
Can I use voice typing in Cursor?
Yes. SnailText adds voice typing to Cursor on Mac and Windows. Press the hotkey (Option+Space (Mac) / Ctrl+Space (Windows), customizable), speak, and the text lands at your cursor in any Cursor field, the same way it works for voice to text in every other app on your machine.
Does the dictation work offline?
Yes. SnailText runs the speech model on your device, so dictation works with no internet connection after the model is downloaded. The optional AI cleanup model runs locally too.
Is my voice uploaded anywhere?
No. Audio is processed in RAM on your machine and discarded the moment the text is ready. Nothing is sent to a server for transcription.
How much does SnailText cost?
The free tier gives you unlimited local speech-to-text with no account. Pro adds larger models and the on-device AI cleanup, $7.49/mo or $89/yr for up to 3 devices.

Dictation in other apps

Start dictating in Cursor

Free local speech-to-text, no account needed. Works in Cursor and every other app on Mac and Windows.

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