Hindi Voice Typing on Mac: Devanagari Output, Hinglish Included (2026)

You can voice type in Hindi on a Mac in two ways. Apple's built-in dictation supports Hindi and is free. But it listens for one language at a time, adds no punctuation on its own, and makes mistakes as soon as an English word appears in a Hindi sentence. Lipo, a Mac app, is the second way. It writes down your Hindi, understands the English words inside it, cleans the sentence into correct Devanagari (the alphabet Hindi is written in), and can translate it all into English before pasting it. If you only ever speak formal, standard Hindi, try Apple's dictation first. If you speak the way people really speak in Delhi or Mumbai, keep reading.

The differences described below are facts, not opinion, and you can check them yourself in ten minutes.

Why does Hindi voice typing usually fail?

There are three reasons, and only the first is about the speech model.

Speech to text (the technology that turns spoken audio into written words) learns from recorded speech. There is much less recorded Hindi than English, so Hindi recognition is a little worse. That difference has become much smaller since 2023. Most modern speech to text models, including the ones Lipo uses, get standard Hindi right most of the time.

The second problem is Hinglish, which means Hindi with English words mixed in. Almost no working Hindi speaker says a full sentence without an English word. "कल client के साथ meeting है, presentation ready रखना।" A model that listens only for Hindi hears "client" and either drops it or replaces it with the closest Hindi-sounding word. Then the sentence no longer means what you said. An app built for Hindi has to recognize the English word, understand it, and write it the way the reader expects.

The third problem is punctuation. Hindi uses the danda (।) at the end of a sentence, and many people now use a normal full stop instead, especially in chat. Apple's dictation makes you say "पूर्ण विराम" out loud to get one. Nobody does that.

How to voice type in Hindi on a Mac with Lipo

1. Install Lipo from uselipo.com. It needs macOS 15.2 or newer. The 7-day trial is free and needs no credit card.
2. Choose Hindi as your dictation language when you first set up Lipo, or later under Dictation, then Language. Lipo can also detect the language automatically, but choosing Hindi works better.
3. Allow microphone and accessibility access when asked. The accessibility permission lets Lipo paste into other apps.
4. Click into any text field (any place where you can type): Gmail in Chrome, WhatsApp Desktop, Notes, Slack, Word, or the prompt box in Cursor.
5. Hold the right Option key (the default shortcut key, which you can change), speak, and release the key.

When you release the key, Lipo transcribes what you said, cleans it up, and pastes the finished text where your cursor is. It does not type letter by letter while you speak.

Here is what you said, the way people really talk:

"हाँ तो, कल सुबह दस बजे... नहीं ग्यारह बजे meeting है, मतलब उस client वाली, और report, report आज ही भेज देना यार।"

Here is what Lipo pasted:

कल सुबह ग्यारह बजे क्लाइंट वाली मीटिंग है। रिपोर्ट आज ही भेज देना।

You said "दस बजे, नहीं ग्यारह बजे", and Lipo kept only the correction, eleven. Lipo removed the filler words "हाँ तो" and "मतलब" (words people say while thinking) and the second "report". It recognized "meeting", "client" and "report" as English words and wrote them in Devanagari (मीटिंग, क्लाइंट, रिपोर्ट), the way a Hindi newspaper would print them. In Formal mode "यार" is removed, and in Casual mode it stays.

For anything longer than two or three sentences, switch the shortcut key to Toggle mode. Press once to start, and press again (or press Return) to stop.

Devanagari, Latin, or both?

This confuses many people, so we will be exact.

If your dictation language is Hindi, Lipo writes the whole sentence in Devanagari, including the English loanwords. "Meeting" becomes मीटिंग, "deadline" becomes डेडलाइन, and "client" becomes क्लाइंट. This is transliteration, writing a word from one language in the letters of another. It is how these words are printed in Dainik Jagran and how they appear in a formal email, and it keeps the pasted text in one script. The difference from a plain Hindi speech model is not the script. It is that Lipo really recognized the English word, so you get मीटिंग and not a Hindi word that sounds like it.

Maybe you want a word to stay in English letters, for example a product name or a term your team writes in English. Add it to the custom dictionary spelled that way, and Lipo will keep it.

Maybe you want the whole sentence in romanized Hindi, which is Hindi in English letters ("kal subah das baje meeting hai"). That is a way of spelling, not a language, and Lipo does not write it. We have not built it yet, partly because there is no standard spelling: is it "hai" or "hain", "kya" or "kyaa"? If you want it, email us and tell us which spelling you would use.

How to speak Hindi and get English text

For many people, this is the real reason to use voice typing.

You think in Hindi. But your manager in Bangalore, your client in Toronto, your professor and your Slack channel all use English. So you form the sentence in Hindi, translate it in your head, and then type. Lipo makes that one step. Open the Translation tab in settings, set "Lipo pastes" to English, and choose when translation should happen:

• Always translate. Choose this if nearly everything you write is in English.
• Translate with this hotkey. Choose this if you want Hindi for family and English for work. You hold one key for Hindi and a different key for English. Most people use this one.

Speed is the obvious benefit. The bigger benefit is that you stop sounding like a simpler person than you are. Anyone who writes in a second language knows the feeling. You have the whole thought in Hindi, with the right respect for a senior and the right warmth for a colleague. But the English you type is three plain sentences, because grammar took all your attention. When you speak Hindi and let Lipo translate it, the tone stays.

Here is a messy example, because real dictation sounds like this:

You said (Hindi, with a restart and a slip): "सर, वो invoice... मतलब पिछले हफ्ते वाला नहीं, मंगलवार वाला, वो भेज दीजिएगा, मुझे आज ही चाहिए था।"

Lipo pasted (Formal mode, output English): Could you please send me Tuesday's invoice, not last week's? I need it today.

"चाहिए था" is past tense if you read it literally. Lipo understood it as the polite request it was meant to be, because the cleanup step understands the sentence before the translation step begins.

Lipo cleans the Hindi first, then translates the cleaned meaning. This order matters. If you machine-translate the raw speech (exactly what you said, with the "हाँ तो" and the restarts still in it), you get correct English with no clear meaning. If you clean first and then translate, the result reads like something you typed on your best day. In Formal mode the English reads like a professional email, and in Casual mode it stays relaxed and friendly. The general setup is in how to dictate in one language and type in another.

Translation is included in every plan, and Hindi voice typing without translation is unlimited. Every new account starts with a 7-day free trial, no credit card needed. Plans and prices are on the pricing page.

Names, places and the custom dictionary

Every speech model makes mistakes with Indian names. "Aditya" becomes "Aditi", "Priyanka" loses a syllable, and "Kondapur" becomes something you cannot recognize. The fix is the custom dictionary. Add the name spelled the way you want, and Lipo uses that spelling from then on. Dictionary entries work in every language, so "Aditya" is spelled correctly whether you dictate in Hindi, in English, or translate from one to the other.

Add your own name first. Then add your team's names. Then add the products you talk about. It takes five minutes, and it fixes the most annoying type of error.

What about Wispr Flow, Willow Voice, Aqua Voice and superwhisper?

The other apps you will find are Wispr Flow, Willow Voice, Aqua Voice and superwhisper. They are all well made, all work best in English, and all list Hindi as a supported language. Here is the part of the comparison that matters if Hindi is your main language.

Every app in that table says it supports Hindi. When we tested them with real Hinglish sentences, "supports" only meant the model knew Hindi words, not that it was accurate. English was excellent in all four. Hindi was clearly worse, and Hinglish was worse again. Lipo is built with the opposite priority. Hindi, Bangla and Arabic get the same accuracy work as English, because for most of our users these are the main language, not a rare case.

All four can write down standard Hindi. Wispr Flow's docs say it chooses one language for each recording, which is the wrong design for Hinglish. And none of the four translate. If you think in Hindi and write in English all day, you still do the translation in your head, as before.

Screenshots and Visual Brief, in Hindi

Lipo has two more features beyond plain voice typing, and Hindi speakers use them a lot.

While you dictate, the small floating window (the pill) shows a screenshot button. Click it, select the part of the screen you are talking about, and keep talking. When you release the shortcut key, Lipo pastes the text where you are writing and attaches the screenshot to the same message automatically. "ये error देखो" arrives together with a picture of the error. You do not need a separate screenshot tool or any drag and drop.

Visual Brief is the bigger feature. It exists because AI tools like Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor only read text, and some problems are easier to show than to describe. For example, a page layout that looks wrong, or a bug you can repeat but cannot explain. You record your screen and talk about it in Hindi ("इस button पे click करने से page reload होता है लेकिन data नहीं आता"). Lipo writes down what you said, looks at what happened on screen, and writes a clear prompt in English, ready for the AI's text box. It is like giving a video to a tool that cannot watch video. See the Visual Brief docs.

What about Apple's Hindi dictation?

Use it if you want to. It is free, it works on your own computer with nothing sent over the internet, and for a short note in plain Hindi it is fine.

It fails in three ways: no automatic punctuation, no removal of filler words, and only one language at a time. English words inside a Hindi sentence are unpredictable. Sometimes you get डेडलाइन, and sometimes a Hindi word that sounds a little like it. To change between Hindi and English dictation, you go back into settings each time. There is no translation.

Google Docs voice typing also supports Hindi for free, but only inside a Google Doc in Chrome. It has the same punctuation problem, and you have to copy the text and paste it where you really wanted it.

We will not pretend these tools are useless. For a lot of everyday use they are enough. Lipo is worth its price when you write Hinglish all day, need punctuation without saying it, or want to speak Hindi and send English.

Frequently asked questions

Can I voice type in Hindi on a Mac?

Yes. Apple's built-in dictation supports Hindi (System Settings, Keyboard, Dictation). Lipo also supports Hindi voice typing in any app, with automatic punctuation, filler word removal and Hinglish support.

Does Apple dictation work for Hindi?

Yes, for plain Hindi. It doesn't add punctuation automatically, it listens in one language at a time, and it often gets English words inside a Hindi sentence wrong.

How do I type Hinglish on a Mac by voice?

Set Lipo's dictation language to Hindi and speak normally. Lipo writes the whole sentence in Devanagari. It recognizes English words like मीटिंग and क्लाइंट and writes them in Devanagari, the way Hindi newspapers do. Use the custom dictionary to keep a specific word in English letters.

Can I get romanized Hindi (Hindi in English letters)?

Not currently. Lipo writes Hindi in Devanagari. Romanized Hindi (Hindi in English letters) has no standard spelling, which is the main reason we haven't built it.

Can I speak Hindi and get English text?

Yes. Set the output language to English in Lipo's Translation tab. Lipo writes down the Hindi, cleans it, then translates it before typing it. Translation is included in every plan.

Does Hindi voice typing work in WhatsApp and Gmail?

Yes. Lipo pastes into any text field, including WhatsApp Desktop, Gmail and Google Docs in the browser, Mail, Slack and Notes.

Is there free Hindi voice typing for Mac?

Apple dictation and Google Docs voice typing are both free and both support Hindi. But neither one adds punctuation on its own, handles Hinglish well, or translates.

Does it understand regional accents?

Standard Hindi from Delhi, UP, MP and Bihar works well. Strong regional accents are usually recognized. Strong dialect words (Bhojpuri, Haryanvi) are usually changed to standard Hindi in the cleanup step.