Dictation in Linear on a Mac

Linear has no dictation feature of its own. What it has is an editor that reacts to characters, and a keyboard model where a single letter outside a text field is a command. Dictation produces both, so the cursor's location matters more here than in a plain text box.

The Linear-specific trap: a dictated slash opens the command menu

Typing "/" in a Linear description opens the editor command menu, and every word after it filters that menu instead of entering the issue. Dictating a date as "9 slash 14", a path, or an "and slash or" is enough to trigger it. Press Escape to close the menu, then keep going. Linear's editor also autoformats markdown as you speak it, so a dictated "asterisk space" begins a bullet list and a dictated "hash space" becomes a heading.

The second trap: single letters are commands outside the field

Linear binds single keys to actions. Inside the title or description field they are just characters, but the moment focus leaves the field, dictated letters become commands: assigning, labelling, and changing status on the issue you happen to be looking at. Confirm the text cursor is blinking inside the field before you start speaking, and stop dictation before you click anywhere else.

Escape does not lose your draft

Closing the create-issue modal with Escape saves what you have as a draft rather than discarding it, and Linear offers it back the next time you create an issue. That makes Escape the safe reflex when the slash menu opens or you realise you dictated into the wrong field.

Dictate an issue

1. Turn Dictation on once: System Settings → Keyboard → Dictation. Full steps in enable dictation on macOS.
2. Open the create-issue view and click into the description field, not the title. The title is short enough to type and long enough to get mis-transcribed.
3. Dictate the body in one pass. Say "comma" and "period"; avoid "slash".
4. Stop, then type the parts speech gets wrong: identifiers, links, and label names.
5. Read it back, then submit.

A shape that survives being spoken

1. The problem, in one sentence, from the user's side.
2. What is in scope and what is explicitly out. Speaking the out-of-scope list is the highest-value thirty seconds on the page and nobody types it.
3. Acceptance criteria, spoken as plain sentences and formatted into a checklist afterwards.
4. Two or three edge cases.
5. Links to designs, logs, and prior issues. Type these.

If nothing types at all

• Linear's desktop app and Linear in a browser are separate microphone clients as far as macOS is concerned. Check System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone for whichever one you use, and separately for the dictation tool.
• Dictation dead everywhere, not just Linear: dictation not working on Mac.

A hotkey that inserts once instead of streaming keys

Voice Type writes punctuation from the audio and inserts the finished text on release, so the slash menu never opens mid-sentence and the same hotkey works in the editor and the pull request that closes the issue: voice typing for Mac.

Keep going

• Dictation in Jira (the same slash menu, a different editor)
• Dictating GitHub issues without notifying strangers

Sources

• Linear Docs: Editor
• Linear Docs: Create issues
• Apple: Dictate messages and documents on Mac