Dragon left the Mac. Here’s a modern dictation app to replace it.
Nuance discontinued Dragon for Mac back in 2018, and it’s not coming back. TongueType is a current, actively developed alternative for the dictation part of what Dragon did: it transcribes your speech into any app, runs 100% on your Mac, costs $19.99 once, and needs no voice training to get started. Read on for an honest look at what carries over and what does not.
macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon · Free forever, Pro is $19.99 once
What happened to Dragon on Mac
If you landed here, you probably already know the short version: there is no current version of Dragon for Mac. Nuance discontinued Dragon Professional Individual for Mac in 2018, with version 6.0.8 as the last release and no further updates since. Microsoft acquired Nuance in 2022 for roughly $19.7 billion, and there have been no announced plans to bring Dragon back to macOS.
So if you’re running an old copy on an aging Mac, hoping it survives the next macOS upgrade, you’re looking for a replacement. The good news is that speech recognition has changed a lot since 2018. Modern models are accurate out of the box, handle accents and background noise well, and don’t make you sit through enrollment to build a voice profile.
TongueType vs Dragon for Mac
This is a fair side-by-side for the dictation part of the job. Dragon details below describe the last Mac release (6.0.8, 2018); since it’s discontinued, those won’t change. Check each app’s own site for anything you want to confirm.
| TongueType | Dragon for Mac | |
|---|---|---|
| Status on Mac | Actively developed | Discontinued in 2018 |
| Price | Free tier, or $19.99 one-time for Pro | Historically $300+ |
| Voice profile training required | No, general model works right away | Yes, enrollment and training |
| Where audio is processed | 100% on your Mac | On your Mac |
| Voice commands / macros | No, dictation only | Yes, command mode |
| File transcription | Yes | Yes, batch mode |
| Languages | 12 | Sold per language |
| Runs on current macOS | Yes, macOS 14+ on Apple Silicon | No, no updates since 2018 |
What TongueType does not replace
Honesty first, because this matters if you were a Dragon power user. TongueType transcribes speech into text. It is not a voice-control-the-computer tool, and it does not do what Dragon called command mode.
No voice commands or macros
Dragon let you say things like “select the last paragraph,” “bold that,” or “scratch that,” and it would edit and navigate for you. You could build custom macros and drive the interface entirely by voice. TongueType does none of that. When you hold the hotkey and speak, it writes down what you said and drops the text at your cursor. That’s the whole feature.
If voice-driven editing and hands-free computer control are non-negotiable for you, TongueType is not a full Dragon replacement, and we’d rather you know that now. On macOS, Apple’s built-in Voice Control covers a lot of that command-and-navigation ground, and it’s worth a look alongside a dedicated dictation app like TongueType.
Where TongueType is the modern replacement
No voice training, accurate from the first word
Dragon built a personal voice profile through enrollment and training, and it got better the more you corrected it. TongueType uses Whisper, a general speech recognition model that’s highly accurate out of the box and handles a range of accents and background noise well. There’s no enrollment step and no profile to maintain: download the model once and start dictating. The trade-off is that you can’t train it on your own voice the way Dragon did, but for most people the general model is accurate enough that you won’t miss the setup.
$19.99 once, not $300 plus
Dragon Professional Individual for Mac historically ran $300 or more. TongueType Pro is a single $19.99 purchase, good on up to 5 Macs, with no subscription and no account. The free tier already includes every feature, with a monthly allowance for live dictation, so you can try the real thing before you pay.
Your audio never leaves your Mac
Transcription runs entirely on your Mac using CoreML and the Neural Engine. Nothing is uploaded, there’s no account, and it works with the Wi-Fi off. If you dictate sensitive material, like legal, medical, or client work, on-device processing keeps it on the machine.
File transcription is built in
Drop an audio or video file into Transcribe audio/video file… and get a transcript back, locally. See the file transcription page for details.
Custom vocabulary without retraining
Names, jargon, and product spellings that tripped up dictation tools can be handled with rule-based postprocessing you configure yourself, so the words you use most come out right without training a profile.
If you used Dragon mainly for long-form professional dictation, our professional dictation page goes deeper on that workflow.
Replace the dictation, keep your privacy.
Free to download, free to try, and your audio stays on your Mac.
macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon · Direct download, no App Store