I use a keyboard shortcut to start and stop recording and it will put the transcription into the clipboard so I can paste into any app.
It's a huge productivity boost - OP is correct about not overthinking trying to be that coherent - the models are very good at knowing what you mean (Opus 4.5 with Claude Code in my case)
I am using Whisper Medium. The only problem I see is that at the end of the message it sometimes puts a bye or a thank you which is kind of annoying.
If you want local transcription, locally running models aren't quite good enough yet.
They use right-ctrl as their trigger. I've set mine to double tap and then I can talk with long pauses/thinking and it just keeps listening till I tap to finish.
Also haven't tried but on latest MacOS 26 apple updated their STT models so their build in voice dictation maybe is good enough.