

Select each command and there are examples and alternatives that can be used. There are a lot of commands for controlling the cursor and display, such as Scroll Up, Scroll Down, Go to Beginning, Go to End, Select Word/Sentence/Paragraph and so on. Instead of tapping a key to begin dictation, tick the option Enable the dictation keyword phrase and you can simply say "Computer, blah blah." Just like on Star Trek!Ĭlick the Dictation Commands button so see a list of the things that can be controlled with your voice. Open Accesibility in System Preferences and select Dictation on the left. However, dictation can be used for more than this and it is possible to control the Mac with spoken commands. Where you can type, you can often speak instead. Control your Mac with spoken commandsĭictation is an alternative to typing in text using the keyboard in apps. What’s on the Mac stays on the Mac as Apple says (it's not always true though).
Text to speech mac hotkey Offline#
The additional privacy comes from the fact that nothing needs to be sent to Apple and the voice recognition is performed offline on the Mac. You might not want enhanced dictation if you are seriously short of disk space, but for most people there are performance and privacy benefits. I have heard some people report as much as 1.2 GB.
Text to speech mac hotkey download#
It requires a 422 MB download on my Mac, but it could be more on your Mac. Take another look at the dictation options and there is an Enhanced Dictation option and a checkbox to enable it.

Enhanced dictation for privacy and offline use Some people just don't like the idea of Apple listening to them. Apple is very security and privacy concious, so it is unlikely to happen, but it is not impossible. Does this bother you? Obviously, Apple is not going to share anything with anyone, but as we have seen many times before, servers online are sometimes hacked and when hackers have access to the contents, who knows what they may use it for. Apple receives everything that is said to your Mac and so it will have access to audio files and transcripts of everything. If you travel with a MacBook, you will not always have a good reliable internet connection and without it, dictation will not work very well, if at all. There are two issues to be aware of here and one is that you need an internet connection. The company uses speech recognition to turn it into text, which it then sends back to your Mac. When you dictate into an app instead of typing, your speech is recorded and sent to Apple. If there are problems or if you have an external microphone, click below the icon and select the microphone. The microphone image shows the current audio level and you will see it jump around as you speak. My favorite is to tape the right Command button twice, which is a key I don't normally use, so I can't acciddentally press it.Ĭheck that the microphone is working simply by speaking. Of course, you would need to take care not to accidentally choose one that is already used for some other function. If you don’t like this particular hotkey and tend to press it accidentally, clicking Shortcut displays a menu listing several variations and a Customize option that enables your choose your own key combo. There is a simple On/Off control and after setting it to On, you can enable dictation at any time and in any app by tapping the Fn (function) key twice. Click Keyboard and then click the Dictation tab. There used to be a separate Dictation & Speech item, but now it is part of Keyboard. Enable dictation in macOSĭictation is not set up by default, so go to the Apple menu in the top left corner of the screen and select System Preferences. If you have not tried this feature, you should, because it could completely change the way that you work with your computer. You should make more of this great feature.Īlmost everywhere you can type in text on the Mac, in apps like word processors, Notes, Reminders, and others, you also have the ability to dictate by talking into the Apple Mac’s built in microphone. It is really hard for even an expert touch typist to keep up with someone speaking, so why type when you can talk? Dictation and speech recognition is built in to macOS and it is very easy to use. Most people will find that even speaking slowly is much faster than they can type.

So why don't you dictate more on your Apple Mac instead of typing? It saves time and effort. How fast can you type? How fast can you speak? There is no contest and speech wins every time.
