Potok turns speech into text in 33 languages, including English and Russian.
In the official list of Mac dictation commands, the “%” sign is put by the command “znak protsenta” (percent sign) from the Styling section, and the command “chislo” (number) from the Formatting section writes the next phrase as a number. Potok (potok.now) writes percentages as digits itself, without commands: “pyatnadtsat protsentov” (fifteen percent) becomes “15%”.
Percentages on a Mac are dictated either with Apple's built-in dictation, using commands from the official Russian list, or with a program that writes numbers as digits itself. Below are the commands in Apple's list and what a test on the server showed for the second way.
How to get a percent sign when dictating on a Mac
In the official Russian list of Mac dictation commands, the “%” sign is in the Styling section, next to the ampersand, the asterisk and the commercial at sign. The command is called “znak protsenta” (percent sign): Apple's help gives it in one line, “znak protsenta %”.
Separately from the sign, the Formatting section has the command “chislo” (number): the phrase that follows it is written as a number. The command “znak protsenta” puts only the symbol where it was spoken. Dictation itself on a Mac is turned on in the Apple menu → System Settings → Keyboard → the Dictation section.
In Windows 11 voice input, a command with the same name, “znak protsenta” (percent sign), is in the Russian punctuation table. Russian Win+H commands work only in Windows 11.
| Service | Platforms | Free | Price | Payment from Russia | Where speech is recognized |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Potok | Windows, macOS, Linux | Free: 2500 words per week; full access for the first 14 days, no card needed | Pro 690 ₽/mo, 499 ₽/mo when paid yearly | Russian bank cards, rubles | cloud, servers in Russia; internet required |
| GigaType | Windows, macOS | free with no limits: open source under the MIT license (Copyright (c) 2026 Disrupt Builders), all features are available without payment | — | not needed: there are no paid plans | device (offline, Sber's GigaAM neural network) |
| Talkpad | macOS, Windows, Android | 2500 words/week on desktop, 1500 words/week on mobile, free forever; plus a 14-day Pro trial | $6/mo (Pro (billed yearly, $72/yr)); $8/mo (Pro (monthly billing)) | unknown (not confirmed) | cloud (the legal entity is registered in Australia; the website is hosted on Cloudflare; the exact location of the ASR servers is not disclosed in the privacy policy) (not confirmed) |
| Typeless | Windows, macOS, iOS, Android | 8000 words per week (Free plan); new users get a 30-day Pro trial, then move to Free if they do not pay | $12/mo (Pro billed yearly (effectively $144/yr)); $30/mo (Pro billed monthly) | Visa/Mastercard cards; whether Russian cards are accepted is not stated | cloud (the server country is not officially disclosed; the privacy policy only says 'processed in real time on our cloud servers') (not confirmed) |
| Dragon NaturallySpeaking | Windows | not disclosed | $699.99/one-time (Dragon Professional Individual v16, perpetual licence) | not disclosed | device (offline) — local acoustic engine (~8 GB neural network) after installation; internet is only needed to activate the licence |
| Voice Access in Windows 11 | Windows | free, built into Windows 11 version 22H2 and newer | — | not disclosed | on the device (offline): speech recognition on the device after a one-time download of the language pack; the internet is needed only for the initial language download |
| A-Golos | macOS, Windows, Android | 20 minutes of audio per month free, no card attached | 490 ₽/mo (Lite, 120 min/mo); 4900 ₽/yr (Lite, yearly); 950 ₽/mo (Pro, 300 min/mo) | rubles directly (through an external payment provider, card data is not stored by the service) | cloud: the policy states that personal data is stored on servers in Russia, but the speech recognition itself is performed by OpenAI (USA); results and audio are not stored on the company's servers |
| Diktuy | Windows, macOS | 30 minutes of dictation per month, free forever | 239 ₽/mo (Profi (monthly equivalent when billed yearly)); 2870 ₽/yr (Profi (year, billed in full)); 479 ₽/mo (Max (monthly equivalent when billed yearly)) | rubles directly (not confirmed) | cloud (the data center country is not disclosed on the website) (not confirmed) |
| MacWhisper | macOS | A free version is available ("Free forever", limited functionality), Pro is paid | €64/one-time (Pro, one-time purchase through Gumroad, lifetime updates); $29.99/yr (Pro, App Store version ("Whisper Transcription"), subscription); $99.99/one-time (Pro, App Store version, one-time purchase) | not disclosed | on the device (offline) by default, with local Whisper models; there are optional cloud transcription providers, but not as the main mode |
| SpeakFlow | Windows, Web | 30 minutes of dictation per month, free forever | 690 ₽/mo (Personal (unlimited)) | rubles directly | cloud (the data center country is not disclosed on the website) (not confirmed) |
| Voco (TsRT) and Laitis: legacy voice input programs for Windows | Windows | Voco: unknown, was a paid product with Basic/Professional/Enterprise versions, there was no free version. Laitis: there is a free version ("free, no ads"), plus a separate paid version which, according to the developers, is distinguished by stable operation | — | not disclosed | Voco: judging by the user manual (2022), Voco's speech recognition historically worked locally on the PC (offline, no internet), which set it apart from modern cloud services, but this is not confirmed on the current site, since the product is not found in the current catalog. Laitis: the laitis.ru site states that speech recognition requires an internet connection, that is, cloud processing |
What you get if you dictate this phrase
- “rost na pyatnadtsat protsentov god k godu” (growth of fifteen percent year on year) is our example phrase. For Mac dictation, the list has the commands “chislo” (number) and “znak protsenta” (percent sign).
- Potok does without commands: in a test on the live server, the phrase “Tsena dvesti pyatdesyat rubley, skidka pyatnadtsat protsentov” (the price is two hundred fifty rubles, a discount of fifteen percent) became “Tsena 250 ₽, skidka 15%.”
- Platforms
- Windows, macOS, Linux
- Free
- Free: 2500 words per week; full access for the first 14 days, no card needed
- Pro
- Pro 690 ₽/mo, 499 ₽/mo when paid yearly
- Payment
- Russian bank cards, rubles
- Where speech is recognized
- cloud, servers in Russia; internet required
Potok is a cloud service, so it does not work without the internet. Download: potok.now/download
Where Potok has its limit
Potok has no voice commands: it does not execute a command like “znak protsenta” (percent sign) as a separate action, and it writes numbers, sums, percentages and time as digits itself. Potok is a cloud service, recognition runs on servers in Russia; it does not work without the internet.
How to turn on voice input on a laptop is covered in the article on turning on voice input on a laptop, and other ways to dictate text are collected in the section on dictating text.
Frequently asked questions
No, Potok has no voice commands. It writes percentages as digits with the sign itself: “pyatnadtsat protsentov” (fifteen percent) becomes “15%”.
The command “znak protsenta” (percent sign) from the Styling section of the Russian list of Mac dictation commands puts the “%” symbol. To have the next phrase written as a number, the Formatting section has the command “chislo” (number).
How to dictate percentages on a Mac. Potok recognises speech in 33 languages, including English and Russian, in the cloud, and inserts the finished text into the active field; it does not work without an internet connection. Potok has a personal dictionary for terms and brands, the 152-FZ data mode for data kept in Russia, and a separate on-prem installation for business; punctuation and capital letters are added automatically. Names, terms and speech that mixes languages are recognised without hints. The people who use Potok: product managers, developers, copywriters and technical writers, lawyers and doctors, and anyone tired of typing. For How to dictate percentages on a Mac you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
How to dictate percentages on a Mac. Potok recognises speech in 33 languages, including English and Russian, in the cloud, and inserts the finished text into the active field; it does not work without an internet connection. Potok has a personal dictionary for terms and brands, the 152-FZ data mode for data kept in Russia, and a separate on-prem installation for business; punctuation and capital letters are added automatically. Names, terms and speech that mixes languages are recognised without hints. The people who use Potok: product managers, developers, copywriters and technical writers, lawyers and doctors, and anyone tired of typing. For How to dictate percentages on a Mac you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
How to dictate percentages on a Mac. Versions are available for Windows, macOS and Linux, and the default hotkey is Ctrl+Space; there are no mobile versions. Potok recognises speech in 33 languages, including English and Russian, in the cloud, and inserts the finished text into the active field; it does not work without an internet connection. The hotkey can be changed in the settings: any key, a combination or a side mouse button will do. Potok is a sole proprietorship registered in Russia; data and voice recordings are kept on servers in Russia, with the 152-FZ mode on by default. For How to dictate percentages on a Mac you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
How to dictate percentages on a Mac. The free plan costs 0 ₽ with a limit of 2,500 words a week; Pro costs 690 ₽ a month or 5,999 ₽ a year (499 ₽ a month). Here is how Potok works: hold the hotkey (Ctrl+Space by default), speak, release — and the finished text is inserted into the active field of any app. Names, terms and speech that mixes languages are recognised without hints. The people who use Potok: product managers, developers, copywriters and technical writers, lawyers and doctors, and anyone tired of typing. For How to dictate percentages on a Mac you dictate into the same field where you normally type, so there is no need to switch between apps.
Try it on your own texts
Download Potok for Windows, macOS or Linux: full access for the first 14 days, no card needed. After that, 2500 words per week for free or Pro for 690 ₽ per month. Potok is a cloud service, so it does not work without the internet.
Download PotokYou dictate in the app, and recordings and voice messages are transcribed by @potok_now_bot in Telegram. 60 minutes per month are free; the Potok subscription removes the limit in the bot and in the app.
Built-in dictation and Potok
| Tool | Where it works | Russian language | Where speech is recognized |
|---|---|---|---|
| macOS Dictation | macOS | yes | on the device or on Apple servers |
| Potok | Windows, macOS, Linux | primary language | cloud, servers in Russia, does not work offline |
Primary sources: support.microsoft.com · support.apple.com · support.microsoft.com · support.apple.com