File stories faster, capture quotes accurately, and hit every deadline. Steno turns your voice into text inside any app on your Mac, so you can focus on the story instead of the keyboard.
Journalism has always been a race against the clock. Deadlines are measured in minutes, not days. The 24-hour news cycle and the rise of digital publishing have only accelerated the pace. Reporters are expected to file breaking stories within the hour, produce long-form features on tight timelines, and maintain a constant presence across newsletters, social media, and their publication's website.
Despite this relentless demand for speed, most journalists still produce their work the same way they did twenty years ago: by typing. Even the fastest typists in a newsroom rarely exceed 60 to 70 words per minute during sustained writing. Meanwhile, the average person speaks at 130 to 150 words per minute without effort. That gap represents an enormous untapped productivity gain for anyone whose job requires producing large volumes of written content under pressure.
When a story breaks, open your CMS or text editor and dictate the lead, context, and quotes as fast as you can speak. Steno transcribes in under a second, so the text appears almost as quickly as you can formulate the sentences. File a 500-word breaking story in three minutes instead of twelve.
For investigative pieces and feature stories, dictation helps with the first draft. Many writers find that speaking a narrative produces more natural, readable prose than typing it. Dictate the rough structure, then edit on screen. The first draft flows faster, and the editing process refines it into polished copy.
After an interview, dictate your impressions, key quotes, and follow-up questions while they are still fresh. Place your cursor in your notes document, hold the hotkey, and speak everything you remember. This produces more detailed notes than trying to type from memory minutes or hours later.
Daily newsletters require consistent output. Dictate your newsletter draft, then tighten the copy during editing. For social media posts, dictate the text directly into your scheduling tool. The conversational tone of spoken text often works better for social audiences than carefully typed prose.
| Task | Typing (50 WPM) | Voice with Steno |
|---|---|---|
| Breaking news story (500 words) | 10 minutes | 4 minutes |
| Feature article draft (2,000 words) | 40 minutes | 15 minutes |
| Post-interview notes (800 words) | 16 minutes | 6 minutes |
| Daily newsletter (600 words) | 12 minutes | 5 minutes |
| Estimated daily time saved | 1.5 to 2.5 hours across a typical reporting day | |
Use the time savings calculator to estimate your personal productivity gain based on your daily word count and typing speed.
Steno sits in your Mac's menu bar and activates with a single hotkey. There is no application to switch to, no recording window to manage, and no separate transcription queue. You hold a key, speak, release, and the text appears wherever your cursor is. This zero-friction design is critical for deadline work where every second matters.
Because Steno uses the macOS Accessibility API to insert text rather than the clipboard, it never overwrites what you have copied. You can dictate a paragraph, then immediately paste a quote you copied from a press release. Your workflow remains uninterrupted. Read more about how Steno's text insertion works.
Steno also works in every text field on your Mac. Whether you are writing in Google Docs, WordPress, Ghost, Substack, Slack, or a proprietary CMS, Steno inserts text directly at the cursor. No integrations to configure, no plugins to install.
Steno is designed for real-time voice-to-text dictation rather than transcribing pre-recorded audio files. It works best when you speak directly into your Mac's microphone. For interview transcription, you can re-dictate key quotes from your recordings into your article draft using Steno.
Yes. Steno inserts text into any active text field on your Mac using the Accessibility API. It works with WordPress, Ghost, Google Docs, Medium, Substack, and any browser-based or native editor where you can type.
Steno's AI transcription handles proper nouns, place names, and current event terminology with high accuracy. It is trained on a broad corpus that includes news content, so it recognizes names that appear in public discourse. Unusual or very new proper nouns may occasionally need manual correction.
Absolutely. Steno transcribes in under a second after you release the hotkey, regardless of speaking speed. Most people speak at 130 to 160 words per minute, and Steno handles that pace without difficulty. You can dictate as fast as you naturally speak.
Join thousands of professionals who have reclaimed hours from documentation. Steno is free to download for Mac.
Download Steno Free