Voice dictation that actually works for Bangla, Hindi, Tamil, and Urdu

Yes, there is a Mac dictation app built properly for Bangla, Hindi, Tamil, and Urdu. Lipo (ours) supports all four, plus Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Kannada, and Malayalam. It includes AI cleanup (a second step that removes filler words, adds punctuation and fixes grammar) and translation both ways, from your language into English and back. Apple's built-in dictation covers Hindi for free, and no other language from the region. Apps built on Whisper (a free speech-recognition model made by OpenAI) list all of these languages, but quality varies a lot by language.

Writing these languages on a computer has been slow and frustrating for years, for no good reason. Most people use transliteration keyboards, where you type the sounds in English letters, like "kemon acho", and hope the software guesses কেমন আছো. Or they give up and write in English, even when their reader would prefer their own language. Dictation should end this problem. You already say these sentences out loud every day, and the computer should be able to write them down. (You can call it dictation or voice typing. The two terms mean almost the same thing.)

Why these languages break most dictation apps

• There is little training data. Speech models learn from recorded speech, and the big collections of recordings are mostly English. Bangla and Tamil get only a small share, and accuracy is lower because of it.
• Everyone code-switches. Code-switching means mixing two languages in one sentence, and real Hindi conversation does it all the time: "meeting reschedule kar do please". Hinglish, Banglish, and Tanglish are how people really talk, and a model that expects pure Hindi or pure Bangla makes mistakes exactly where you speak most naturally. We cover this in how to voice type in mixed languages on a Mac.
• Small errors in these scripts are very visible. Devanagari, Bengali, Tamil, and Perso-Arabic scripts use conjuncts (letters joined into one shape, such as ক্ষ or क्ष) and matras (the vowel marks attached to letters). If the recognition is slightly wrong, the result is not almost right. It is clearly wrong.
• Names are written wrong. South Asian personal and place names rarely appear in Western training data. A tool without a custom dictionary will misspell your colleagues' names forever.

The five options at a glance

Which one wins depends on which of these languages you speak, and on whether you need English out of the other end. What each company publishes about its own coverage is the checkable part, so that is the last column.

1. Lipo: best for these languages as your main language

Lipo treats South Asian languages as core languages, not as a small extra. It supports Bangla, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Kannada, and Malayalam. We tuned it for exactly the problems listed above: accents, English words mixed in, and names. Test it with your own speech before you decide. For step-by-step setup in a specific language, see our guides to Bangla voice typing on a Mac and Hindi voice typing on a Mac.

• You speak naturally, and Lipo writes cleanly. When you pause, start a sentence again, or say a word and then change it, Lipo removes all of that. The text in your document is clean and in the proper script, ready to send.
• A custom dictionary for the names that matter. Teach it your family names, colleagues' names and local places once, and it stops guessing.
• Translation both ways. This changes daily life. You speak in Bangla, and Lipo writes clean English into the work email. Or you speak in English, and Lipo writes Hindi for the family group chat. As of September 2026, no other mainstream dictation tool translates into these languages as part of dictation.
• It works everywhere you type. Mail, WhatsApp Web, Google Docs, your code editor. Press the shortcut key, speak, and the text appears in the app you are using.

If you have spent years on Avro or Google Input, the change is simpler than it sounds. You stop spelling your language in English letters and just say it.

Where it is not the obvious pick: it needs a connection, because the transcription and cleanup happen on a server. If your work cannot leave your machine, the Whisper apps below are the honest answer, even though you will spend the time editing.

Every plan covers all ten languages above, along with the rest of Lipo's 50+ languages, with translation included. The words appear while you are still speaking. Every new account starts with a free 7-day trial, no credit card needed. That is the fastest way to find out what Lipo does with your accent and your vocabulary.

2. Apple's built-in dictation: best free option, if you speak Hindi

macOS ships with dictation for Hindi, and for no other South Asian language. It is free, so try it first if Hindi is yours. Expect a word-for-word transcript with no cleanup, and you must say the punctuation out loud. For example, you say "I will call you tomorrow comma after lunch full stop" and it writes "I will call you tomorrow, after lunch." Mixed-in English words and names come out unevenly. For a quick note it works. For a full email, you will spend a lot of time fixing the text.

3. superwhisper and MacWhisper: best for offline transcription

Whisper models list Bangla, Hindi, Tamil, Urdu, and related languages as supported, and for clear, slow speech they can do a fair job, especially in Hindi. The problem is that "supported" does not mean "works well". Accuracy in these languages is lower than what the same models reach in English. The output is a raw transcript, meaning exactly what you said, including every "um", pause and mistake. Translation works only into English. If you need offline processing (everything on your own computer, nothing sent over the internet), they are worth testing. Just test with your real voice, not slow, careful speech.

4. Wispr Flow, Willow Voice and Aqua Voice: best for fast English

These are the three modern dictation apps Lipo is usually compared with, and all three are built for fast, clean English. What they publish about these languages differs, and it is worth reading before you pay.

Wispr Flow names seven languages it has "trained and tuned to match English-level performance". Hindi is one of them, so Hindi speakers should give Wispr Flow a real trial. Bangla, Urdu and Tamil are named in neither that tier nor the second one. Its help centre also states that language detection is per recording: "switch languages mid-sentence and Flow transcribes the entire segment in one language", which is the wrong design for Hinglish or Banglish.

Aqua Voice publishes all 49 of its languages, which is more useful than a larger number with no list behind it. Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil and Urdu are on it. Telugu, Punjabi, Gujarati, Kannada and Malayalam are not, and Lipo supports all five. Willow Voice claims more than 100 languages and publishes no list at all, so there is no way to check whether yours is treated seriously.

None of the three does voice typing translation, so speaking Bangla to write English is not something any of them offers. For any of them, check with your own speech: dictate a paragraph with conjuncts, a few names, and an English word or two mixed in the way you actually talk.

5. Google Docs voice typing: best browser-only fallback

Google Docs voice typing handles several Indian languages and costs nothing. But it only works inside Docs in a browser, punctuation support varies by language, and there is no cleanup. It is useful as a backup, but not as your main tool.

A realistic test for your language

1. Dictate a message you would really send to a friend, and mix in English words where you naturally would.
2. Include the names of three people you know, said the way you actually say them.
3. Include one word with a conjunct or stacked letterform (ক্ষ, क्ष, ஸ்ரீ) and check that the script comes out right, including the matras.
4. Say one sentence, then correct part of it, the way you would in speech. Could you send the result without edits?

Most tools fail step one in Bangla or Tamil, because the mixed-in English words alone confuse them. The tool that passes all four steps in your language, spoken your way, is the one worth paying for. And if none of them pass, the transliteration keyboard will still be there. We think you won't go back to it.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a voice typing app for Bangla on Mac?

Yes. Lipo supports Bangla dictation, including AI cleanup that removes hesitations and applies your spoken corrections, and translation between Bangla and English in either direction. It has a 7-day free trial with no credit card needed, so you can test it with your own voice and accent. Whisper-based apps also list Bengali, but the output is a raw transcript that usually needs editing.

Does voice dictation work with Hinglish or mixed Bangla-English speech?

This is where most tools struggle, because real South Asian speech switches between languages in one sentence all the time. Models that expect pure Hindi or pure Bangla write the English words wrong, and English-first models write everything else wrong. Lipo was tuned with code-switching in mind. Test any tool with a real mixed sentence before you trust it.

Can I dictate in Hindi and get the text in English?

With Lipo, yes. You speak in Hindi, and Lipo transcribes it, cleans up what you said, translates it, and pastes clean English where you are writing. It works in the other direction too, and between any of its 50+ languages. Whisper-based tools can translate into English only, and Apple's dictation does not translate at all.

How accurate is dictation in Bangla, Tamil, or Urdu?

Accuracy in South Asian languages varies more between tools than in English, because there is less training data and small errors in these scripts are very visible. Names are the most common failure. A custom dictionary, which Lipo includes, fixes names and local terms that come up often. The honest answer for any tool is to run a short test with your own speech. Free trials make that easy.

Does Apple's built-in dictation support South Asian languages?

Apple supports Hindi and some other Indian languages, but coverage and quality vary by language and macOS version, and there is no cleanup or translation. Check System Settings under Keyboard and Dictation for the current list on your Mac. It is worth trying first because it is free. Then compare the output against a tool built for these languages.