A slight tweak up or downwards might improve your voice recognition accuracy significantly. In OSX's System Preferences > Sound pane, adjust the sound input level slider as you speak both softly and deliberately loudly to find the optimal setting. If you're serious about fully using voice features of your Macintosh - enable Enhanced Mode in System Preferences > Dictation & Speech pref pane.Īny time you're using speech recognition on a Mac, taking a moment to verify and adjust your headset or standalone microphone input levels is wise.

And, it supports additional Character and Formatting commands. It allows CONTINUOUS dictation without restrictions or delays. Once you've done this, you can use dictation offline anywhere at anytime without an internet connection. It understands common punctuation and 'new line' to advance the cursor to a new paragraph - but not much more.ĮNHANCED MODE requires you checkbox it as an option and downloads an 800MB file onto your Mac. Here we provide a few Apple dictation tips, suggestions and insights to get the time-saving and typing-saving results you hope for.Īpple provides TWO methods of Mac speech to text translation: BASIC MODE requires a live internet connection to capture short snippets of your voice recording, send it to Apple's servers for translation, then return it to your application window after a delay of a few seconds. Alternatively, click 'Edit' on the application's menu, and then select 'Start Dictation.'Ĭlick the 'Done' button or press your shortcut key or keys again to deactivate Dictation when you are finished.How To Improve Dictation On Mac Optimizing Your OSX Voice Recognition Session There's a few things you can do to make sure your Mac OSX dictation experience is optimal. Place your cursor at the location where you want to dictate your text, press the shortcut key or keys you chose in Step 4, and then begin dictating your text. You can use any application that has text fields. Launch the application where you want to convert voice to text.

Click the 'Shortcut' pull-down menu and select which key or series of keys on your keyboard you want to press to notify your Mac that you want it start converting voice to text. If you only have one microphone connected to your Mac, the internal microphone is selected automatically.

Click the microphone icon and select which microphone you want to use. Click the 'View' menu, and then select 'Dictation & Speech.'Ĭlick the 'Dictation' tab if it is not selected already, and then click the 'On' radio button to enable dictation.

How to enable voice dictation on mac