The draft, at speaking speed.
You already compose in your head — on walks, in the shower, mid-conversation. Back at your Mac, the bottleneck is the keyboard. Say the draft instead, and edit something that exists.
Acousmos is not a writing app — it's the fastest way to get words into the one you already use. Press a hotkey in Scrivener, Ulysses, Obsidian, Google Docs, or anywhere else you can type, talk the way you'd tell it to a friend, and clean prose lands at your cursor. Behind that, every word you ever dictate is kept — audio and text — in a searchable archive on your Mac. First drafts stop being the hard part.
Three things writers actually need.
1 · A style that organizes without rewriting you
The Shape style is the drafting engine: ramble, loop back, contradict yourself — it comes out organized and complete, still in your voice. Lists appear only when you clearly enumerate. Minimal stays closer to the literal words for notes; Verbatim skips AI entirely when you want the raw take. Each has its own hotkey, and you can add custom styles with your own prompt.
2 · An archive that works like a writer's notebook
Every dictation is kept on your Mac — the recording and the text, full-text searchable, exportable in open formats. Character ideas you spoke in passing, the plot fix from last month, the phrase you loved and lost: three seconds of search, and you can replay the moment you said it. It's the notebook you always meant to keep, kept automatically.
3 · Words that stay yours
No training on your voice, nothing you say collected, archive on your machine. Pro adds two exits from anyone's cloud for unpublished work: your own API keys, or fully local models that work offline — dictate the manuscript in airplane mode if you like.
Names your book invented
Generic speech models mangle invented names and places. The three-layer dictionary learns yours — add them once, or just fix them once in the output and let it propose the correction. From then on, spelled your way, every time.
From morning pages to final polish.
First drafts
Talk the scene through; edit a page that exists instead of facing a blank one.
Morning pages
Three spoken minutes before coffee. Archived, dated, searchable.
Idea capture
The walk untangles the plot; your desk catches it. Speak it into any app; find it forever.
Blog posts & newsletters
Conversational registers are dictation's home turf — sound like you, faster.
The other writing
Pitches, replies to editors, submission notes — the words around the work.
Editing by voice
Select a paragraph and tell the Edit style "make this shorter". It rewrites in place.
Questions.
Can I really draft prose by voice?
Drafting is what dictation is best at. The Shape style is built for it: say it any way — rambling, out of order, correcting yourself mid-sentence — and it comes out organized and complete, still in your voice. You edit a draft that exists instead of staring at a page that doesn't. And if you want exactly what you said, Verbatim gives you the raw transcription with no AI pass at all.
Will AI clean-up flatten my style?
The styles are deliberately conservative about your voice. Minimal only fixes recognition errors and keeps your phrasing intact; Shape organizes without rewriting your word choices into something generic. If you have a house style, you can add a custom style with your own prompt — or drop to Verbatim, where no AI touches the words.
Is my unpublished work safe?
Your drafts and recordings stay in a local archive on your Mac, and your voice is never used for training. On Pro you can go further: route transcription through your own API keys, or run fully local, offline models so an unpublished manuscript never touches anyone's cloud.
What happens to the ideas I dictate throughout the day?
Every dictation — the original audio and the text — lands in a permanent, full-text-searchable archive on your Mac, in an open format you can export anytime. The plot fix you spoke into your notes app last month is three seconds of search away, and you can replay it in your own voice.
Also see Acousmos for voice notes, for developers, the translation guide, or how Acousmos compares.
One month of Pro, free.
No signup, no card. Speak your next opening paragraph and see what comes back.