How to voice type in ChatGPT

The short answer: For voice to text in ChatGPT, use dictation: press the microphone icon, talk, and ChatGPT turns what you said into text you can edit before you send it. Don't press Voice, which starts a spoken conversation. To dictate into ChatGPT's Mac or Windows app, or to have a long prompt rewritten as clear instructions first, use AudioPen's voice typing.

ChatGPT has two microphones, and they do different things. Dictation records what you say and hands it back as text in the message box, for you to read, fix and send. Voice is a live conversation: you talk, and ChatGPT talks back.

Prompts don't have to be pretty. A quick question only has to say what you want, and ChatGPT's own microphone is right there for that. Instructions are another matter, like a brief for a long piece of work or a prompt you'll use again. Then it's worth having what you said rewritten as instructions before it lands in the box.

Here's what to press in ChatGPT wherever you use it.

AudioPen's voice typing types into ChatGPT the way it types into any app with a text field: in the browser and in the Mac and Windows apps. The same hotkey works in ChatGPT, Claude, your code editor and your email.

On a Mac or Windows computer there are two ways to use it. Press and hold the hotkey, talk, and let go, and clean, formatted text lands at your cursor. That's the one for a quick line. Double-tap the hotkey, talk, and tap it again, and AudioPen rewrites what you said in the style you picked before it types it in. That's the one for a paragraph. On iPhone, iPad and Android you talk through the AudioPen keyboard or the floating AudioPen bubble.

For a quick question, hold the hotkey, let go and send. When I'm just talking to Claude and don't care much about the formatting, I sometimes insert a transcript.

For instructions, double-tap and pick the LLM Prompt style. Its instruction reads: “Write clear, detailed instructions that I can use as a prompt for an LLM or AI Agent. Avoid ambiguity like your life depends on it.” It's the fourth most used style on AudioPen notes, at 4.5% of 20,000 notes from July to September 2026. With the rewrite, you read the instructions before ChatGPT acts on them. A missing step or a vague “make it better” jumps out of a clean list. In what you said out loud, it slips past. That matters most when ChatGPT will work on its own for a while, or when you'll paste the same prompt again next week. If LLM Prompt doesn't fit how you work, write your own style.

Each dictation lands where your cursor is and in a typing history. It never becomes a note in your AudioPen library. You choose how it transcribes: turn on the offline option in the Mac, Windows, iPhone or Android app and the audio never leaves your device, or use cloud transcription, where the audio isn't saved. The rewrite step runs in the cloud, and nothing from it is stored. That covers the audio. Your prompt still goes to OpenAI when you send it, like anything you type there.

The free plan includes voice typing with a limited number of sessions, and every writing style, including the ones you make. AudioPen Prime makes voice typing unlimited.

The AudioPen plugin for ChatGPT does a different job. It lets ChatGPT search and read the notes in your AudioPen library, and it needs Prime.