To use voice input with Zed on Mac, open the Agent Panel, click the message editor, dictate your task with a system-wide dictation shortcut, and review the text before pressing enter. Zed has no built-in speech-to-text for its agents yet, so the voice part comes from macOS or a dictation app such as Speakmac. If text does not land in the panel, copy the transcript and paste it.

Zed is the code editor made by Zed Industries. This post is about its AI features: the Agent Panel, which runs Zed's own agent or external agents such as Claude Agent, Codex and Gemini CLI over the Agent Client Protocol, and the Inline Assistant. It is not about the League of Legends character, and the microphone icon in Zed's title bar is for collaboration voice chat with teammates, not dictation.

Where does the prompt go in Zed?

Press cmd-? to focus the Agent Panel, or click the ✨ icon in the status bar. For Zed's own agent, the message editor reads Message the Zed Agent, @ to include context, / for commands. For an external agent it shows that agent's name instead. Press enter to send, and shift-alt-escape to expand the editor when a brief gets long.

Two other places take a prompt:

  • Inline Assistant: ctrl-enter in an editor or the terminal panel opens a prompt that rewrites the current selection. It uses Zed's configured model, not external agents.
  • Terminal Threads: choose Terminal from the new-thread menu to run a CLI such as Claude Code directly. You dictate into that CLI's own prompt.

How do you dictate a task into the Agent Panel?

  1. Install Speakmac and finish microphone and Accessibility setup. Choose a dictation model that suits your Mac.
  2. In Zed, start a thread with the agent you want: Zed Agent or an installed external agent from the new-thread menu (+ in the panel toolbar).
  3. Click the message editor so it has focus, then use your Speakmac Push to Talk or Hands-Free shortcut.
  4. Say the change, the current behaviour, the limits and how you will check it worked. Stop dictation before reviewing.
  5. Type @ to attach the exact files or symbols, fix any misheard identifiers, then send.

If you dictate long briefs, consider setting "agent": { "use_modifier_to_send": true } in Zed's settings. enter then adds a new line and cmd-enter sends, so a stray Return cannot fire off half a prompt. Leave Speakmac's Send After Dictation off here until you trust the transcript.

What makes a voice prompt work well in Zed?

Speak the reasoning and type the precise context. Zed's @ menu can attach files, directories, symbols, earlier threads, diagnostics, branch diffs and URLs, which is faster and safer than spelling a path aloud. Two other controls are worth knowing before you send:

  • Profiles (Zed Agent only): cmd-i opens the profile selector. Ask is read-only, Write can edit files and run commands, and Minimal uses no project tools. Ask is a good start for a rambling spoken question.
  • Modes: shift-tab cycles the mode selector where the agent offers one, such as a plan mode in some external agents.

Start with a small, observable change:

Add a loading state to the settings form. Disable the Save button while the request is in flight, keep the current layout, and show the error message inline if it fails. Check it with the network throttled.

For a bug, say what triggers it and what should happen:

When I rename a project, the sidebar still shows the old name until I restart. Make the sidebar update straight away. Don't change the rename dialog. Add a test that renames a project and checks the sidebar label.

These are example briefs, not claims that any agent completed or tested the work. Review the diff Zed shows and run your checks yourself.

What should you type instead of speaking?

Speak the explanationType or attach the exact evidence
What you expected and what happenedError output and stack traces
Behaviour, edge cases and scope@ file and symbol mentions, commands
Constraints and how to verifyCode, payloads and screenshots

Do not dictate credentials or customer data into a prompt. Speakmac transcribes on your Mac, but once you send from Zed, the chosen model provider's or agent's policy applies. Speakmac's privacy page covers its own transcription step.

What if text does not appear?

Click back into the message editor and try a short sentence. If Speakmac produced a transcript but nothing landed, use Copy Last Transcript and paste it into the panel. The history and recovery help shows where to find earlier transcripts.

Zed draws its own text fields rather than using standard macOS controls, and some voice tools have had trouble with them. An open Zed issue reports that Willow Voice says "No text field focused" in the Agent input (October 2026), another that Voice Control typing does not reach Zed's terminal, and an Aqua user could not dictate into the agent message window. A 2025 bug that repeated Apple Dictation text in Zed Preview was traced to an input-method regression that was fixed. We have not yet tested Speakmac in Zed's Agent Panel, so treat the paste fallback as part of the workflow.

Does Zed have its own voice input?

Not as of Zed 1.25 (October 2026). Dictation for the assistant has been requested since August 2024 and is marked Planned on Zed's community board. A community pull request that added a microphone with local whisper.cpp was closed in May 2026, with Zed saying it would handle the feature differently.

Until that ships, a Zed contributor's suggestion in that thread still works: turn on macOS Dictation and speak into the agent. That is fine for a sentence or two. A dedicated dictation app helps when you want one shortcut across Zed, your terminal and the browser, custom words for library and project names, and transcription that stays on the Mac.

Try Speakmac for Mac, or compare the workflow with voice prompting in Codex and voice dictation in Claude Code.

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