For students
Voice typing that works offline — including the lecture hall with no wifi. Free to start, no account, no card.
No account needed. Works offline.
The lecture
Three minutes into the lecture, you are already behind. You can't type fast enough to capture the actual sentences, so you fall back to fragments — keywords, half-thoughts, hopeful arrows.
Voice notes catch the whole sentence. Plug in headphones with a mic, listen, paraphrase as you go: "OK so the professor is saying that mitochondria evolved from ancient bacteria, and the evidence is the double membrane and circular DNA…" — full thought, in your own words, while the lecture continues.
Or just dictate the lecturer's literal words during the breaks. Same hotkey. Same speed.
The essay
The hardest part of an essay is the first 500 words — the blank Google Doc, the cursor, the slowness. Voice to text for essays solves the cold-start problem: don't worry about quality; first drafts aren't supposed to be good. Once the essay exists, editing is fast.
The compact models handle English drafts reasonably well. For names of theorists, places, and concepts that Whisper keeps mangling, drop them into the custom dictionary once with the spelling you want. Auto-replace runs on the Pro tier.
Anywhere you write
Same hotkey, every text field. SnailText pastes the same way Ctrl+V does.
Documents & notes
Comms & study
Plus any other text field on your laptop.
Multilingual
Whisper recognises 100+ spoken languages — including the language you actually think in.
If English is your second language, you can dictate notes in your first language during a lecture and translate later. Switch languages per mode without changing settings.
The interface ships in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian. The dictation itself works for everyone, in their own language.
Offline
Cloud dictation tools need wifi. SnailText doesn't.
Whisper runs entirely on your laptop's CPU or GPU. Once the model is downloaded (one time, about 150 MB), there is no internet involvement. Library wifi died? Lecture hall has no signal? Train station, plane, cafe with a captive portal? It all just works.
This is less of a flex and more of a baseline. You shouldn't need permission from a wifi network to write an essay.
Pricing
The compact local models handle the vast majority of student work — note-taking, essay drafts, journaling, language practice. No time limit, no word cap, no watermark, no nag screen. Pro is for the rare cases where you need top-shelf accuracy on long-form research or non-English theses.
Free
$0 always
Compact local models. Unlimited dictation. No account.
Pro
$7.49 / month or $89/yr
Advanced local models. Up to 3 devices. 30-day refund.
FAQ
No catch. The free tier has no time limit, no word cap, no watermark. The two smallest Whisper models are open-source — we're not paying for them, so we can give them away. Pro pays for the larger models and ongoing development; the free tier pays for word-of-mouth.
Probably, for the free tier. The compact models don't need a GPU and are fine on most modern laptops. The bigger Pro models prefer a GPU and slow down on older CPUs. If it's too slow on your machine — uninstall and email us, we'll refund anything you paid.
No. The text comes out as your words, in your tone, at your level. Editing it after dictation is what makes it your essay — same as if you had typed it. (Also, dictation has been a normal academic accommodation for decades.)
Yes. SnailText pastes text the same way Ctrl+V does, so any standard text field is supported — Google Docs, Word, Notion, Apple Pages, Scrivener, Obsidian.
Also for
Vibe-coders
Speak prompts to AI agents
Developers
Code, commits, Slack — by voice
Writers
Drafts at speaking speed
Project managers
Status updates in 30 seconds
Therapists
Session notes that never leave your laptop
Lawyers
Privileged work product stays local
RSI
Voice when typing hurts
Comparing tools? Read SnailText vs Wispr Flow or SnailText vs SuperWhisper.
Try it
About thirty seconds to install. No card, no email, nothing.
⌥ Space — that's the only thing you need to remember.
