Speech to text for Microsoft Copilot on Mac

Yes, you can use speech to text with Microsoft Copilot on a Mac. Depending on your account, Copilot offers its own dictation or a voice conversation, but if you want to say a long prompt, read it, and then send it, Sayburst is the simpler path: click Copilot's message box, hold fn, talk, let go. The prompt appears in the box, punctuated and without the filler, ready for you to check and press Return.

#What Copilot has built in

Microsoft splits voice in Copilot into three features (Microsoft Support, checked October 31, 2026):

• Dictation puts your speech into the prompt box as text, in real time. Microsoft lists it for work or school accounts, at copilot.cloud.microsoft or in the Copilot desktop and mobile apps, and says dictation audio isn't stored.
• Copilot Voice is a live spoken conversation, available for personal accounts as well. For work and school accounts, Microsoft says your audio and Copilot's are stored temporarily for feedback and deleted after 48 hours.
• Read aloud speaks Copilot's answers, for work or school accounts.

Microsoft also says voice features need an eligible subscription and depend on region. The Copilot app on the Mac App Store is free with in-app purchases and requires macOS 14 or later.

So if you have a personal account, your built-in choice is a conversation rather than dictation. That works for quick questions. For a prompt with five constraints and a paragraph of background, you want to see the text before Copilot does.

#How to set it up

1. Install Sayburst and grant Microphone and Accessibility. The speech model downloads once, then recognition runs on your Mac.
2. Choose a mode for Copilot. Set the Copilot app (or your browser) to Clean in Sayburst's settings. It keeps your sentences as you said them, punctuated, which is what a prompt needs. Turn on Sayburst Writer, the optional on-device model, if you change your mind mid-sentence a lot.
3. Click Copilot's message box, hold fn, talk, let go. Read it over and press Return. Or turn on auto-send for the Copilot app, and Sayburst presses Return for you after inserting.

#Prompts, spoken and typed

Planning with real constraints. What you say:

"I'm planning a team offsite for twelve people in Lisbon in, um, late March. Budget is around eight thousand euros not counting flights. Two of us are vegetarian and one person uses a wheelchair, so, uh, the venue has to be step-free. Give me three options for a two-day agenda."

What lands in Copilot:

I'm planning a team offsite for 12 people in Lisbon in late March. Budget is around 8,000 euros, not counting flights. Two of us are vegetarian and one person uses a wheelchair, so the venue has to be step-free. Give me three options for a two-day agenda.

Every number made it through as you said it. If a Writer rewrite would ever change a number, Sayburst types the cleaned transcript instead.

A spreadsheet question. "In column C I have dates as text, like fourteen slash three slash twenty six, how do I turn those into real dates so I can sort them, actually, so I can filter by month" becomes a single clear question ending in "so I can filter by month". The false start is gone.

Asking about a draft. In Word or Outlook on your Mac, click into the Copilot box and say "Rewrite the second paragraph so it doesn't sound like I'm blaming the vendor, and keep it under a hundred words." Same shortcut, different app.

#Copilot's voice options vs Sayburst

If you have a work account with dictation and only talk to Copilot, its own button is fine. Sayburst makes sense when you're on a personal account, when you want your audio to stay on the Mac, or when you want the same key in Outlook, Teams and every other AI tool you use.

#Where your words go

• Recognition runs on your Mac. Sayburst never uploads your audio, to Microsoft or anyone else.
• Cleanup, including Sayburst Writer, also runs on your Mac. A cloud writer is only involved if you connect one with your own API key, and then only text is sent.
• Copilot receives the text prompt when you send it and handles it under your Microsoft account and its privacy settings, exactly as if you'd typed it.

#Tips for Copilot

• Front-load the context. Say who it's for, what you've tried and what to avoid before you ask the question. It's ten seconds of talking. Our guide on dictating AI prompts has more habits that get better answers.
• Use Ask for quick ones. Sayburst's Ask shortcut lets you ask a question by voice and shows the answer in a panel, using the writer you've set up, without opening Copilot at all.
• Keep your names right. Add colleagues, client names and internal project names to Vocabulary so they reach Copilot spelled correctly.
• Reuse the same habit across Microsoft apps. The shortcut works in Word, Outlook and Teams, and in other assistants like ChatGPT and Claude.

#Limits

Sayburst doesn't talk back; for a spoken back-and-forth, Copilot Voice is the tool. It inserts your prompt when you let go rather than streaming it in live, and it pastes into the focused box, so an app that blocks pasting won't accept it. It needs an Apple silicon Mac with macOS 14 or later. On Windows, use the dictation built into Windows or Copilot's own voice features.

Questions people ask

Can you dictate to Copilot?

Microsoft lists dictation into the prompt box for work or school accounts, and Copilot Voice, a spoken conversation, for personal accounts too. Sayburst lets anyone dictate a written prompt into Copilot on a Mac, whatever the account.

What's the difference between Copilot Voice and dictation?

Copilot Voice is a live spoken conversation where Copilot talks back. Dictation turns your speech into text in the prompt box so you can read and edit it before sending. For detailed prompts, dictation gives you more control.

Does Sayburst work in the Copilot Mac app and in Word or Outlook?

Yes. Sayburst types into whatever text field has focus, so it works in the Copilot app, Copilot in a browser, and the Copilot boxes in Microsoft 365 apps on your Mac.

Is my voice sent to Microsoft when I use Sayburst?

No. Sayburst transcribes on your Mac and never uploads audio. Microsoft only receives the text prompt you send.