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The Dictate with Pipit action starts a Pipit dictation from Apple’s Shortcuts app. You speak, stop with your Pipit shortcut, and the text goes to the next step of your shortcut instead of being pasted.

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What the action does

  • When the shortcut reaches the action, Pipit starts recording and the overlay appears, as it does when you press your shortcut.
  • Press your Dictate shortcut (Fn/Globe by default) to stop. Press Esc to cancel.
  • The action gives back your text as Dictated Text, which the next actions can use. Nothing is pasted.
  • Pipit’s main window doesn’t open. If Pipit isn’t running, Shortcuts starts it in the background.
Pipit has to be set up first, with Microphone and Accessibility turned on. See Permissions.

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Options

Click the action’s options to change them. AI cleanup only works when AI cleanup is turned on and set up. See AI cleanup.

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Example: dictate a new note

This shortcut turns what you say into a new note in Notes.
1

Create a shortcut

Open the Shortcuts app and click + to make a new shortcut.
2

Add the Pipit action

In the action list on the right, search for “Pipit” and add Dictate with Pipit.
3

Add the note

Search for “Create Note” and add it below. Its text should be Dictated Text. If it isn’t, click the text field and choose Dictated Text.
4

Run it

Run the shortcut, say your note, then press your Dictate shortcut. A new note appears with your words.
You can swap Create Note for any action that takes text, such as Send Message or Copy to Clipboard. To run the shortcut from the keyboard, add a keyboard shortcut in the shortcut’s details.

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If the action fails

The shortcut stops and shows a message that says what to do: finish setting up Pipit, turn on a permission (see Permissions), wait for the voice model to download, or set up AI cleanup. If you see “The dictation ran too long without being stopped, so Pipit cancelled it.”, stop with your Dictate shortcut sooner, or raise Time Limit.