Dictation in Bolt

Voice dictation in Bolt for build prompts, follow-ups, and fixes

Bolt has no built-in dictation, so every prompt is typed, and prompt quality drives both your results and your token cost. SnailText lets you speak them, cleans the text up locally, and drops it into the Bolt prompt and every other app.

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AI dictation in Bolt, on your device

SnailText is AI dictation: a speech model turns your voice into text, then a second model cleans it up, dropping filler, fixing punctuation, and matching the style your work needs. Both models run on your own machine, so nothing you say in Bolt is uploaded for transcription. Press the hotkey, speak, and the finished text lands at your cursor.

Does Bolt have built-in dictation?

Bolt (bolt.new by StackBlitz) has no built-in voice input in its prompt box, chat, or editor. Its own prompting docs describe text-only input, and third-party dictation tools already market themselves "for Bolt," which is a sign the gap is real. (Bolt can help you build voice-enabled apps, and there is an unrelated ride-hailing company also called Bolt with a speech-to-text feature, but neither of those lets you dictate your prompts.) SnailText injects text at the OS level, so it works in the Bolt prompt and every other app on Mac and Windows.

Speech to text in Bolt: how it works

SnailText does not plug into Bolt directly. It runs system-wide: a global hotkey (Option+Space (Mac) / Ctrl+Space (Windows), customizable) starts recording, the local speech-to-text engine (Whisper or Parakeet) transcribes what you said, and the text is pasted at your cursor through the system clipboard, the same way it lands when you type. That means it works in every Bolt field, plus every other app on your Mac or Windows machine, with no extension or integration to set up.

That matters in Bolt specifically: prompt quality directly controls both your results and your token cost, so vague, short prompts waste tokens, and writing richer ones means typing more. Speech to text removes that bottleneck without changing how you work in Bolt.

Voice to text in Bolt: what to dictate

Voice typing in Bolt is not limited to one box. Press the hotkey anywhere a cursor blinks and your speech becomes text, so the things you would normally type out by hand become things you just say.

· The initial one-shot build prompt describing the app, stack, and features
· Follow-up "add X, change Y, fix Z" prompts
· Answers to Bolt's Enhance Prompt clarifying questions
· Ask Bolt and Discussion-mode questions about your code

Talk instead of typing

Download for MacStart dictating in Bolt and every other app

Where typing slows you down in Bolt

· Prompt quality directly controls both your results and your token cost, so vague, short prompts waste tokens, and writing richer ones means typing more.
· Bolt includes the whole codebase in each request, so the fix-and-re-prompt loop burns tokens fast, and the official advice is to type longer, more specific prompts.
· Building an app is dozens of follow-up prompts and clarifying answers, a lot of sustained natural-language typing.

Example dictations for Bolt

Build prompt

"Build a full-stack expense splitter with React and a Node backend. Users create a group, add expenses with a payer and participants, and see who owes whom. Include a running balance per person."

Follow-up

"The balance does not update after deleting an expense. Recalculate the totals whenever the expense list changes, not just on add."

Enhance-prompt answer

"Yes, use Postgres for storage, keep the auth simple with email and password for now, and make the group invite a shareable link rather than requiring accounts up front."

Bolt voice dictation FAQ

Does Bolt (bolt.new) have built-in voice input?

No. bolt.new by StackBlitz has no native dictation in its prompt box or editor, every prompt is typed. (Bolt can build voice-enabled apps, and there is a separate ride-hailing company also named Bolt with its own speech-to-text, but neither dictates your prompts.) SnailText adds dictation to the Bolt prompt and every other app by inserting text at the OS level on Mac and Windows.

Can dictation help with Bolt's token cost?

Indirectly, yes. Bolt rewards specific, detailed prompts and charges by tokens, so a clear first prompt beats a cheap-to-type vague one you have to fix five times. Speaking makes it easy to give that detail up front. Press the hotkey, describe the app in full, and the cleaned-up text lands in the prompt ready to send.

Can I use voice typing in Bolt?

Yes. SnailText adds voice typing to Bolt on Mac and Windows. Press the hotkey (Option+Space (Mac) / Ctrl+Space (Windows), customizable), speak, and the text lands at your cursor in any Bolt field, the same way it works for voice to text in every other app on your machine.

Does the dictation work offline?

Yes. SnailText runs the speech model on your device, so dictation works with no internet connection after the model is downloaded. The optional AI cleanup model runs locally too.

Is my voice uploaded anywhere?

No. Audio is processed in RAM on your machine and discarded the moment the text is ready. Nothing is sent to a server for transcription.

How much does SnailText cost?

The free tier gives you unlimited local speech-to-text with no account. Pro adds larger models and the on-device AI cleanup, $7.49/mo or $89/yr for up to 3 devices.

Start dictating in Bolt

Free local speech-to-text, no account needed. Works in Bolt and every other app on Mac and Windows.

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