Built-in Dictation in VS Code: Code at the Speed of Thought

Name: Built-in Dictation in VS Code: Code at the Speed of Thought
Uploaded: 2026-08-04T18:37:10+00:00
Description: James Montemagno introduces VS Code 1.131’s built-in dictation feature, showing how developers can speak directly into chat, editors, and the terminal...

Today by James Montemagno

James Montemagno introduces built-in dictation in Visual Studio Code 1.131, aimed at hands-free coding, faster idea capture, and accessibility.

Overview

VS Code 1.131 adds built-in dictation that works across core surfaces:

Editor: dictate code and documentation directly into files
Chat: dictate prompts and messages
Terminal: dictate commands

Key points highlighted in the video description:

No extensions required to use dictation.
Dictation is powered by a private, offline transcription model, keeping voice processing on-device.
An optional AI-powered transcript cleanup step can:
- format dictated text
- remove filler words

Link

VS Code 1.131 update notes (Built-in dictation, experimental): https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_131#_built-in-dictation-across-vs-code-experimental