Introducing Monologue for iOS

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I built a smart dictation app that thousands of people use every day. The most prolific users speak more than 5,000 words a day—the equivalent of more than two hours of typing saved.

But because Monologue only lived on Mac desktops, I couldn’t use dictation on my own phone, one of the places where I do the most typing every day.

Apple’s built-in dictation mangles my Indian accent. In loud environments, it’s worse—words get swapped, and sentences are garbled. I once dictated a list of groceries that ended up including “three X” instead of “three eggs.” Every time I dictate something, the cleanup takes longer than typing it out with my own two hands. But typing was frustratingly slow because my thoughts move faster than my fingers.

I solved my problem by building an iOS app. Now, I speak my thoughts, take a quick glance at the output, and hit “send.” I’m not cleaning up missing words or wondering if I sound like myself. My thoughts and my writing are finally moving at the same speed on my smartphone—when I’m sending a note to a friend, sending an email on the go, or even doing some mobile coding.

Today, Monologue is on iOS for everyone to experience their voice as a keyboard.

Voice as a keyboard

You already know what you want to say. Monologue gets it out of your head and onto the screen inside the apps you already use—iMessage, Gmail, Slack, Notes.

Unlike Apple Dictation, which gives you a transcript, Monologue translates your speech into writing. The app cleans up repeated words, removes vocal tics like “um,” and adds punctuation. So you’re sending something clean, not jumbled.

Context-aware formatting

Monologue adapts to the way you write across different apps and contexts, so you do minimal editing.

1. iMessage: Monologue creates writing that is short, casual, and conversational. You don’t have to explicitly indicate which punctuation you want, like an exclamation point or a period. It’s added naturally.
2. Email: Monologue translates your speech into structured paragraphs and clear sentences. Your tone sounds human.
3. Notes: Monologue turns your messy spoken thoughts into something you can actually use later, adding lists, headings, and clean bullets.

Your vocabulary

We all have our own vocabulary—names of friends, acronyms we use, products we love, regional slang.

Monologue learns your words and keeps them with you. If you are using Monologue on Mac, the app syncs your lexicon across both.

Whisper mode

There are times you want to dictate without feeling like you’re performing, like when you’re sitting in a coffee shop or an office where you’d rather not broadcast the content of a draft email to your boss. Speak softly. Monologue’s whisper mode carries the big stick.

Notes for long-form

For that moment when inspiration strikes, but you’re not near a computer, Monologue lets you record longer audio like a voice memo. Use it for journaling or to capture your thoughts on a long walk, then scan the summary later.

Today, it’s simple on purpose. In the future, Notes will connect to third-party apps, becoming a part of the fabric of your workflows.

The shortest distance between speech and writing

The keyboard’s monopoly is ending. Voice notes are now a widely used and accepted form of communication. But there’s a problem on the receiving end. Your friends don’t want to listen to your near-podcast-length updates. The answer is to keep the voice input and make the text output better.

The most common gateway is coding—over 40 percent of Monologue usage in the past three months has been in the terminal or in tools like Cursor and Claude Code, where voice is the fastest way to tell agents what you need. From there, people graduate to emails and messages, then get comfortable enough with dictation to use it for everyday writing. I expect that progression to accelerate now that Monologue travels with you.

Like each product at Every, it’s built with taste—the same care for how something feels, not just whether it works—and quietly raises the quality of your life.

Monologue for iOS is available now for Every subscribers. Experience the shortest distance between speech and writing, wherever you are.

Naveen Naidu is the general manager of Monologue. You can follow him on X at @naveennaidu_m and on LinkedIn.

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We build AI tools for readers like you. Write brilliantly with Spiral. Organize files automatically with Sparkle. Deliver yourself from email with Cora. Dictate effortlessly with Monologue.

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