Typography: Ampersand (&), asterisk (*), at sign backslash (), forward slash (/), caret (^), center dot (.
Punctuation: Apostrophe (‘), open bracket (), open parenthesis(() and close parenthesis ()) open brace (), open angle bracket(), colon (:), comma (,), dash (-), ellipsis or dot dot dot(…), exclamation mark (!), hyphen (–), period or point or dot or full stop (.), question mark (?), quote and end quote (“), begin single quote and end single quote (‘), semicolon ( ).If you have an iPhone or iPad, note that these are identical to the voice commands used on Apple’s iOS. Here’s a full list of voice dictation commands you can use, adapted from Apple’s help site. RELATED: Use Voice Dictation to Save Time on Android, iPhone, and iPad How are you doing?”, you’d have to say “I’m doing well period how are you doing question mark.” You’ll need to speak the punctuation marks you want to type. Like on other operating systems, Voice Dictation won’t automatically fill in the appropriate punctuation marks as you speak a sentence normally. When you’re done dictating, tap the fn key again or click Done to make your Mac stop listening to you. You’ll need to reposition your microphone or configure which microphone is used from the Dictation pane. The purple indicator on the microphone should move as you speak. You can only speak for up to 30 seconds each time if you haven’t set up Enhanced Dictation. If you haven’t, you’ll have to click Done or press the fn key again and your voice will be sent to Apple’s servers, where it’s interpreted and the text is filled into your application. If you’ve set up Enhanced Dictation, they’ll appear immediately. Speak to your Mac and the words you speak will start appearing in the text field. Next, press the Fn (Function) key twice or click the Edit menu and select Start Dictation. To use voice dictation in an application on your Mac, first select a text field in an application. The purple microphone will light up as you speak if your Mac can hear you. You’re also free to customize your dictation shortcut and which microphone dictation uses from here. If you don’t enable Enhanced Dictation, your speech will be sent to Apple’s servers an interpreted there. It will then be able to interpret your voice offline. Click the Dictation & Speech icon in the System Preferences pane and ensure Dictation is set to On.Įnable the Enhanced Dictation option and your Mac will download the appropriate dictionary from Apple’s servers. Click the Apple menu at the top of your screen and select System Preferences. Set Up Enhanced Dictationįirst, you’ll need to enable the Dictation feature.
It lets you use Voice Dictation offline and displays text as you speak, so you can see exactly how your speech is being interpreted. OS X Mavericks contains an “Enhanced Dictation” feature.
The Mac OS X operating system, which runs on all Apple desktop and laptop computers, includes a feature called VoiceOver that speaks the text on your screen through headphones or speakers.
Similar to iOS devices you don’t need any additional software to make MacBook read anything out loud. Text to Speech is a handy feature which allows the user to listen to the text instead of reading it. Siri isn't the same as Dictation, but you can ask Siri to compose short messages, such as email and text messages. In macOS Sierra, you can ask Siri to “turn on Dictation” for you. This feature functions more like voice dictation on a mobile operating system, and less like the more complicated Speech Recognition feature found in Windows. Macs have voice dictation built-in, allowing you to talk instead of type.