Stop typing: talk your first drafts

I timed my own rants, and I talk at about 145 to 165 words a minute. The average typist manages about 52. A fast typist at 70 words a minute still types at less than half my speed. For a first draft, talking wins.

If you've never dictated a word, that's fine. You don't need new software or a new microphone. The computer or phone you already own can do it, and so can the Claude app.

The talking is the easy part. Names are where it stumbles. Say "Siobhan," and voice typing may write "Shivon." The fix comes in two steps. First, set up the microphone. Next, give Claude a list of your words, so it corrects the misses and tells you what it changed.

What you need

• A computer with a microphone, or your phone
• A Claude account (Free works and includes Projects)
• About 10 minutes to list the names you say every day: staff, clients, vendors, products, places
• A quiet spot for your first few tries

Turn on voice typing, device by device

Windows, Mac, iPhone and Android all have voice typing built in. Here's where to find it, as of October 20, 2026.

Skip the sound wave next to Claude's mic for now. That button starts voice mode, a spoken back-and-forth where Claude answers out loud. It's in beta on every plan, and it counts toward your usage. For a draft, use the mic.

The prompt

This prompt goes in a Claude Project's instructions, so every chat in that Project follows it.

Replace the words in [brackets] with your own.

Here's a sample list for a made-up five-person insurance agency.

To build your own list, start with your staff and client lists, your vendors and your price sheet or form list. When a mix-up is also a real word, like "win" or "bob," Claude reads the whole sentence to decide. Check those words in the change list.

Steps

1. Turn on voice typing. On Windows, press the Windows key and H. On a Mac, turn on Dictation in System Settings > Keyboard. On your phone, use the microphone on the keyboard or the one in the Claude app.
2. Write your word list: 10 to 30 names and terms you say often.
3. Make a Claude Project called "Dictation" and paste the prompt into its instructions. On a computer, go to claude.ai/projects, click "+ New Project," then "Set project instructions." Paste the prompt and click "Save instructions."
4. Talk through a real email or memo. Don't fix anything while you talk.
5. Paste it into a chat in that Project and read the list of changes. You can also skip the paste: start a chat inside the Project and talk directly into the message box.
6. Add every new mix-up to the Project instructions, in the form "what it hears means what I said."

How to talk so it types well

• Wait for the cue before you speak. Windows shows "Listening..." and a Mac plays a tone or pulses the cursor. If you start early, you lose your first words.
• Say the punctuation out loud: "period," "comma," "question mark," "new line," "new paragraph." Windows, Mac and Gboard all understand those words.
• With automatic punctuation on, you can skip most of that.
• Talk in short bursts: one thought, then a breath. A Mac stops listening after 30 seconds of quiet, so a long pause means pressing the key again.
• On Windows, "scratch that" or "delete that" takes back what you just said. You can also keep talking and let the cleanup catch it.
• Keep the mic close. A headset works, or hold your phone near your mouth.

What it looks like when it's done

Here's a made-up sample that uses the agency list above. This is what voice typing returned:

This is what Claude sent back from the Dictation Project:

Notice what it left alone. "Quick one," "the new shop" and "before you leave" all stayed. It's still your note, now spelled correctly.

Here's a real example from one of my recordings. The raw transcript read: "We're going to have them use cloud AI to create artifacts and apps for reading their voice, using open whisper." The corrected copy changed "cloud AI" to Claude AI and "open whisper" to OpenAI Whisper.

Check the result

• The names on your list come back spelled correctly.
• The text still sounds like you. If Claude polished it, tell it to put your words back.
• The change list at the bottom matches what you see.
• After a week, the fix list is shorter, because the prompt already covers your common mix-ups.
• If an accent, a speech difference or a loud room keeps confusing it, the word list still helps. Type the parts that don't come through.

If it goes wrong

The same names keep coming out wrong

Your computer's voice typing never sees your Claude word list. Claude's own mic has no custom word list either, as of October 20, 2026. That means the fix happens after you talk. Put every miss on the mix-up line exactly as it came out. On a Mac, words it isn't sure of get a blue underline; click one to pick the right word.

Claude rewrote it to sound fancy

Tell it, "Put my words back. Only fix spelling and punctuation." Then check two things. First, make sure the "Don't make it sound fancier" line is still in the Project instructions. Second, make sure you're in a chat inside the Dictation Project, because a chat outside the Project never sees those instructions.

The punctuation is a mess

Turn on Automatic punctuation (Windows) or Auto-punctuation (Mac) in the settings from the table above. You can also leave it off, since the prompt already tells Claude to fix punctuation.

An accent or a loud room keeps confusing it

Tell your computer which English you speak. Windows offers English for the US, UK, Canada, Australia, India and New Zealand under Settings > Time & language > Language & region. On a Mac, go to Keyboard > Dictation > Languages. Then move closer to the mic.

You're not sure where your words go

Here's what each option does with your voice, as of October 20, 2026:

• Windows voice typing sends your speech online to Microsoft's Azure Speech services. Some newer Copilot+ PCs add "fluid dictation," which runs on the computer itself.
• On a Mac, the note under Dictation in Keyboard settings tells you whether it's processed on your Mac. Sharing recordings with Apple is a separate switch called "Improve Siri & Dictation."
• Claude's mic deletes your audio once it's turned into text. Anthropic says it doesn't keep that audio or train on it.
• On Free, Pro and Max, Anthropic trains on your chats only if you allow it or send feedback with the thumbs buttons. You can check that choice in Claude's privacy settings.

Whichever one you use, don't dictate Social Security numbers, medical details or discipline notes into a personal account.

Common questions

How do I talk to Claude instead of typing?

Click or tap the mic in Claude's message box and talk. Your words appear as text you can fix before you send. Your computer's own voice typing works in Claude's message box too.

Does Claude learn my voice?

No. Claude doesn't train itself on how you sound, and its mic deletes the audio after transcribing it. What improves is your list. Every mix-up you add to the Project instructions is one Claude fixes from then on. Memory, which is on by default for Free, Pro and Max, can remember the people and places in your work. It doesn't change what the microphone hears.

How do I get AI to write like me?

Start by talking. Dictated text is already in your words, and the prompt tells Claude to keep them. For drafts written from scratch, Claude has Styles: give it a sample of your writing, and it builds a style to match.

Do I need a paid plan for this?

No. As of October 20, 2026, Free includes up to five Projects with instructions, plus the mic and voice mode. Voice typing on Windows, Mac and your phone costs nothing extra.

Go further: build your own recorder (Pro)

Who this is for: you've done the steps above, you're on a Windows PC and you want your own tool instead of someone else's text box. "Pro" marks the advanced build, and it's still free to read.

What you need

• A Windows 10 or 11 PC with a microphone. As of October 20, 2026, Claude Code needs Windows 10 version 1809 or later, 4 GB of memory or more and an internet connection.
• A paid Claude plan. Claude Code comes with Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise, not Free. As of October 20, 2026, Pro is $20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly.
• The Claude desktop app for Windows. Its Code tab is Claude Code with buttons instead of a terminal, so you don't need to install Claude Code separately.
• A new, empty folder for the project, like C:\Recorder.
• Your word list from the Dictation Project.

The prompt

You can talk this prompt in instead of pasting it. Click in the Code tab's message box, press the Windows key and H, and explain it the way you'd brief a contractor.

Steps

1. Open the Claude desktop app, click the Code tab at the top, then use "Open folder…" to pick your empty folder. If clicking Code asks you to upgrade, you're on Free.
2. Set the permission mode to Manual in the row under the message box. That way, Claude asks before it edits files or runs commands.
3. Give it the prompt, typed or talked.
4. Approve each step only after you read what it's about to install or run.
5. Test it with 10 seconds of speech that includes names from your list. Check the dated folder for the audio and the text.
6. Tell Claude Code what went wrong in plain words, such as "The shortcut does nothing" or "It still spells Siobhan wrong." Add new mix-ups to the word list file.

What can go wrong

No strong graphics card. Without one, the speech model runs on your processor, and that's slower. OpenAI's Whisper comes in six sizes, from tiny, which needs about 1 GB of graphics memory, to large, at about 10 GB. In faster-whisper's own test on a fast desktop processor, the small model turned 13 minutes of audio into text in 1 minute 42 seconds. An older laptop will take longer.

If that's your setup, ask for a smaller model or an English-only one. Whisper's notes say the English-only versions perform better, especially the two smallest. The cloud is another option: Windows voice typing, from earlier in this post, already runs online.

Windows security prompts. Windows may ask permission when Claude Code installs tools. A program with no publisher signature can trigger "Windows protected your PC," and you'd have to choose "Run anyway." Only allow what you asked Claude Code to build or install. On a work computer, your IT settings may block it.

Microphone permissions. If the audio file is silent, open Start > Settings > Privacy & security > Microphone. Turn on Microphone access, then turn on "Let desktop apps access your microphone."

How I do it. I built my own voice recorder for Windows with Claude Code. An item in my daily brief on October 20 gave me the idea, and I talked the whole build through with Claude Code until it made a working Windows app.

The app has a shortcut that records and saves each recording to folders. When I want it to, it can also fill in a prompt box for me. It runs on my own PC, and the project lives in my Claude Code.

It turns the audio into text on my computer and feeds the speech engine a word list, so it spells Claude, MCP and my vendors correctly. It also keeps a running fix list. One of my early rants came back with "cloud" for Claude and "Slumbers" for plumbers. Those mistakes no longer appear.

Not everyone has a strong graphics card, and you don't need one to start. The Pro section above covers what to do without one.