Dictation in Warp

Voice dictation in Warp for agent prompts, task descriptions, and searches

Warp has voice input for its agent, but it is cloud-based, locked to the Warp Agent, and unreliable on Windows. SnailText dictates into Warp with any agent, runs the speech model on your machine, and works in every other app.

Download for Mac Or for Windows →

Start dictating in Warp and every other app

No account · Nothing uploaded

AI dictation in Warp, 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 Warp is uploaded for transcription. Press the hotkey, speak, and the finished text lands at your cursor.

Does Warp have built-in dictation?

Warp has a built-in "voice input for agents" feature, with transcription powered by Wispr Flow in the cloud. The catches: it is gated behind the Warp Agent being enabled, so if you drive Warp with a third-party CLI agent (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI) you cannot use it, and users report it simply fails to transcribe on Windows, falling back to Win+H. SnailText runs the speech model on your own machine, dictates into Warp's input no matter which agent you use, and works the same in every other app on Mac and Windows.

Speech to text in Warp: how it works

SnailText does not plug into Warp 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 Warp field, plus every other app on your Mac or Windows machine, with no extension or integration to set up.

That matters in Warp specifically: warp's whole value is describing intent in plain English, and those long natural-language prompts are exactly the prose that is painful to type and natural to speak. Speech to text removes that bottleneck without changing how you work in Warp.

Voice to text in Warp: what to dictate

Voice typing in Warp 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.

· Natural-language agent prompts describing a multi-step task
· Debugging context and error explanations for the agent
· Search queries in the Find dialog
· Commit messages and notes in the same terminal

Talk instead of typing

Download for MacStart dictating in Warp and every other app

Where typing slows you down in Warp

· Warp's whole value is describing intent in plain English, and those long natural-language prompts are exactly the prose that is painful to type and natural to speak.
· Warp's own voice is unavailable unless the Warp Agent is on, so third-party CLI agent users are locked out of it.
· The built-in voice flat-out fails to transcribe on Windows for many users, leaving a real gap in the workflow.

Example dictations for Warp

Agent prompt

"Create a new Node project, install Express and a Postgres client, set up a basic server with a health-check endpoint, and add a script to run it in watch mode."

Debugging context

"The build fails with a module-not-found error on the shared package after I moved it. Check the workspace paths and the tsconfig references and tell me what is wrong before changing anything."

Commit message

"Fix the migration order so the foreign key is created after the table it references, and add a down migration that drops them in reverse."

Warp voice dictation FAQ

Does Warp have built-in voice input?

Yes. Warp has voice input for its agent, with transcription powered by Wispr Flow in the cloud. But it is gated behind the Warp Agent (so third-party CLI agent users cannot use it) and many users report it does not transcribe on Windows. SnailText runs the speech model locally on Mac and Windows, dictates into Warp regardless of which agent you use, and works in every other app.

Can I dictate into Warp if I use a third-party CLI agent?

Yes, with SnailText. Warp's own voice input is disabled unless the Warp Agent is enabled, so people running Claude Code, Codex, or Gemini CLI in Warp cannot use it. SnailText inserts text at the OS level, so it dictates into Warp's input no matter which agent you run, and the Development profile restores code identifiers in your chosen style.

Can I use voice typing in Warp?

Yes. SnailText adds voice typing to Warp on Mac and Windows. Press the hotkey (Option+Space (Mac) / Ctrl+Space (Windows), customizable), speak, and the text lands at your cursor in any Warp 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 Warp

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

Download for MacStart dictating in Warp and every other app Or for Windows →