TL;DR: Gmail on the desktop web has no built-in dictation, so voice typing for Gmail means adding a tool that types into the compose box for you. Infina does exactly that: hold Option, speak the email, release, tweak, send, with transcription running on your Mac by default. And with hands-free mode on, you can work your inbox from two feet away: say "open Chrome", then a sentence starting with "type" to draft the reply, no keys touched. Every other dictation app makes you press a hotkey for every single dictation; Infina drops even that. $8.25 a month, billed annually at $99, unlimited words and voice commands, 7-day refund.
The app changes. The two keypresses around every dictation do not. Infina runs on three spoken triggers and there is no fourth. Say "type" and a sentence and it lands as typed text in whatever app is in front of you. Say "send it", or just "enter", and it presses Enter so the prompt actually goes. Say "open Cursor" or "open Slack" and your computer switches apps for you.
Nothing is held down and nothing is pressed. There is no push-to-talk key to find and no Enter key to reach for two hundred times a day, which is the part every other tool in this category leaves to your hands. Wispr Flow, Superwhisper and the rest all stop at inserting text, which leaves the two keypresses around every prompt exactly where they were.
Email is the biggest typing sink of your day
For most professionals, email is where the keyboard time actually goes. Not documents, not code: replies, follow-ups, intros, scheduling threads, "circling back".
A typical knowledge worker sends dozens of emails a day, and each one is a small typing chore. Speaking is roughly three times faster than typing for most people, so voice typing for Gmail attacks the single largest block of typing you do.
There is a second effect. Typed replies get clipped because typing is effortful; you answer three sentences when five would have closed the thread. Spoken replies are naturally more complete, because talking is cheap.
Does Gmail have built-in voice typing?
On the desktop web: no. As of July 4, 2026, Gmail in the browser ships no dictation button of its own. Click into a compose window and there is nothing to talk to.
Two things get mistaken for it:
- Gmail on your phone can take dictation, but that is your phone keyboard's microphone (Gboard or the iOS keyboard), not a Gmail feature. It does nothing for you at a desk on a Mac.
- Google's "Help me write" is AI drafting: you type a short instruction and Gemini writes an email for you. Useful for some, but it is the AI's words, not yours. Voice typing is different: your own sentences, spoken instead of typed.
So if you want to dictate emails in Gmail on a Mac, you need a system-level tool that types wherever your cursor is. That is what Infina is.
How to dictate an email in Gmail with Infina
There is no extension to install and nothing Gmail-specific to configure, because Infina types at the OS level into whatever field is focused:
- Open Gmail in any browser (Chrome, Safari, Arc, Firefox, all the same to Infina).
- Click Compose, click into the body.
- Hold Option (⌥), speak the email, release. The text lands at the cursor.
- Read it over, fix anything, and hit Send.
The same gesture works in the subject line, in a reply box, in a forward note. And because it is system-wide, it works identically in Word on your Mac or Slack; one tool covers everything you type.
Transcription runs on your Mac by default (Apple Silicon), works offline, and your audio never leaves the device. For email, that matters more than people admit: your inbox holds contracts, salaries, medical notes, and other people's secrets.
A habit worth building: dictate the whole email in one breath, then edit. Speak it the way you would say it to the person across a table. First drafts by voice, final pass by eye.
Clearing your inbox hands-free
Push-to-talk already removes most of the typing. Infina's hands-free mode removes the keyboard entirely, and no other dictation tool does this: they all chain you to a hotkey for every single dictation.
With hands-free mode on, from a couple of feet away:
- Say "open Chrome" (or whichever browser holds your Gmail tab). Infina switches you there.
- Speak a sentence that starts with "type", then the reply: "type thanks Maria, Thursday at 2 works, calendar invite coming." Infina types it into the compose box.
- Keep going: "type I have attached the deck from last week as well."
- Say "send it" to press Enter.
One honest caveat on that last step: what Enter does inside Gmail depends on where focus is and how your Gmail settings are configured, so we frame the hands-free loop around composing, not blind-sending. Draft the whole reply by voice from across the room, then give it one glance and click Send yourself. For email, that final human glance is a feature, not a limitation.
This is the mode for triaging your inbox over lunch, dictating replies while your hands are busy, or working through a morning backlog while standing away from the desk. Hands-free is our newest surface and labeled experimental, so it ships off by default (double-tap Cmd to toggle it); push-to-talk always works as the fallback.
Raw dictation or polished prose: pick per email
Base Infina outputs raw text on purpose: on-device transcription with fast rule-based cleanup, no LLM rewrite, no cloud round-trip. For a large share of email, raw is exactly right:
- Raw is fine: internal threads, quick confirmations, scheduling ping-pong, replies to people you talk to daily. Nobody is grading the commas in "sounds good, shipping it today."
- Polish matters: client emails, cold outreach, anything a stranger judges you by.
For the polished tier, Infina's optional $5/month cloud add-on (billed annually at $60) runs your dictation through large language models that fix punctuation, grammar, and formatting, and it adds sharper cloud transcription plus more languages. That is the exact job subscription dictation apps charge $15/month, $180 a year, for; with Infina the base app is $8.25 a month, billed annually at $99, and runs on your Mac, and you add the polish only if and when you want it. Details on pricing.
One more honest note: base Infina is English only today. If you write email in several languages, that also lives in the cloud add-on.
What about Wispr Flow or macOS dictation for Gmail?
- macOS built-in dictation is free and types into Gmail like any text field. It is the zero-cost way to test whether dictating email sticks for you. It stays keyboard-triggered and its accuracy is mixed on names and jargon, but free is free.
- Wispr Flow dictates into Gmail too, and covers Windows and phones. The trade-offs: it is cloud-only with no offline mode, and it is subscription-priced at $15/month, which is $180 a year. Infina is $99/year at the time of writing, on-device by default so your email drafts stay on your Mac, and the $5/month cloud add-on covers the polished-output job when you need it.
- Infina adds the piece neither of the others has: the hands-free loop. Compose email by voice from across the room, switch apps by voice, and never touch a hotkey to trigger a dictation.
For a sentence a week, use the free option. If email is a real slice of your day, the math is simple: $99 a year against $180, dictation that runs on your Mac instead of someone's servers, and a mode of working nobody else offers.
FAQ
Does Gmail have built-in voice typing on desktop? No. As of July 4, 2026, Gmail on the desktop web has no native dictation feature. Dictation on the Gmail mobile app comes from your phone keyboard's microphone, not from Gmail itself. On a Mac you need a system-level tool like Infina.
How do I dictate an email on my Mac in Gmail? With Infina: open Gmail in any browser, click into the compose box, hold Option, speak, release. The text is typed at your cursor. No extension needed, and the same gesture works in every other app on your Mac.
Is voice typing for Gmail accurate enough for real email? Yes for normal dictation: the on-device model Infina runs handles clear speech at 95%+ accuracy. For client-facing email where every comma counts, the optional $5/month cloud add-on adds LLM cleanup that fixes punctuation, grammar, and formatting automatically.
Can I write emails by voice without touching the keyboard at all? With Infina's hands-free mode, yes for the drafting: say "open Chrome", then speak sentences starting with "type" and the reply is typed into the compose box from a few feet away. We recommend clicking Send yourself, since Enter behavior inside Gmail depends on focus and settings.
Is dictating email private? My inbox is sensitive. With Infina, transcription runs entirely on your Mac by default and your audio never leaves the device; it even works offline. Cloud processing exists only as the optional paid add-on. That is a meaningful difference from cloud-only dictation tools.
Is Google's "Help me write" the same as voice typing? No. "Help me write" is AI drafting: Gemini composes an email from a typed instruction, in its words. Voice typing is your own sentences, spoken instead of typed, which keeps your tone and usually takes less back-and-forth.
The bottom line
Gmail never got a dictation button, and email is exactly the kind of prose dictation is best at: conversational, high-volume, daily.
Infina fills the gap at the OS level: hold Option and speak into any compose box in any browser, with on-device transcription that keeps your inbox private. Raw output covers the casual majority of email; the $5/month cloud add-on covers the polished minority.
And when your hands are busy, the hands-free loop, "open Chrome", "type" plus your reply, is something no hotkey-bound dictation app can follow you into. $8.25 a month, billed annually at $99, risk-free for 7 days.
Which voice tool to use in this app
Any of these will get words into the box. They differ in what happens next.
The tools this page covers (Wispr Flow, Apple Dictation) are at the top. The rest of the field follows, because the right answer is sometimes none of the above.
| Tool | Price | Keyboard needed | Pick it if |
|---|---|---|---|
| Infina | $8.25 a month, billed annually at $99, unlimited words and unlimited commands | No. Speak "type", speak the prompt, say "send it" or "enter". | you want to prompt AI tools without touching the keyboard. Say "type" and the words go in, "send it" and the prompt goes, "open Cursor" and you are in the next agent. It is the only one of these that finishes the whole loop by voice in the tools developers prompt in all day. |
| Wispr Flow | $15 a month, or $144 a year billed annually | Yes. A key to start dictating, Enter to send. | you need dictation on an iPhone or an Android phone as well as a laptop, or you write in one of 100+ languages. Those are the two things Infina does not ship. |
| Apple Dictation | free, built in | Yes. A key to start dictating, Enter to send. | you dictate a sentence here and there and do not want to install anything. |
| Superwhisper | $8.49 a month, $84.99 a year, or $249.99 once | Yes. A key to start dictating, Enter to send. | you want to pick and swap the speech model yourself, and dictation into a text box is the whole job. It stops where the text box ends: there is no spoken send, and no spoken app switch. |
| MacWhisper | 65 euros, paid once | Yes. A key to start dictating, Enter to send. | the job is transcribing recorded audio files rather than talking to your computer while you work. |
| VoiceInk | $25 to $49, paid once | Yes. A key to start dictating, Enter to send. | you want plain local dictation at the smallest possible price and you never need your voice to control the machine. |
| Talon | free | No, once you have learned its command language. | you want to drive the entire computer by voice, cursor and clicks included, and you are willing to learn a command language to get there. Talon is the serious hands-free tool on this list. Infina goes after the same freedom with three ordinary English words instead of a syntax to learn. |
The part that is actually different: zero keypresses
The mainstream dictation apps (Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, MacWhisper, VoiceInk, Apple Dictation) are all push-to-talk: you hold or press a key to start talking, and you press Enter to send. That is two physical acts on every single prompt. A hundred prompts in a day is two hundred keypresses that exist only to start and stop the tool. Infina removes both of them. Nothing is held, nothing is pressed, and the same loop runs on three spoken words.
There are three triggers and there is no fourth. "type" types, "send it" sends, "open" opens and switches apps. The send trigger answers to either wording, "send it" or a plain "enter", whichever you find yourself saying. That is the entire vocabulary: no command language, no grammar, no custom scripts to write, nothing to memorize beyond those three words.
When Infina is not the answer. If you need dictation on an iPhone, an iPad, an Android phone or Linux, Infina is a Mac and Windows desktop app and there is no phone version. Wispr Flow covers phones.
Everywhere else, the difference is the loop. Every other tool in that table types words into a box and stops, leaving your hands to press Enter and pick the next window. Infina finishes it: say "type" and your sentence, say "send it" (or just "enter"), say "open Cursor", and keep going without a key.