I’ve become a big fan of using Siri for dictation on my iPhone, rarely tapping in messages any more. I’d love the same capability on my MacBook Air, but it’s not running iOS and doesn’t have Siri. Can I use voice dictation anyway on a Mac OS X system?Ah, Siri. The stuff dreams are made of.Well, maybe not. ?I’m also a big fan of the voice dictation on Siri and when I’m in a quiet enough environment, I’m always impressed at how well it interprets what I say. In fact, from what I’ve seen of the service, it seems to work better with lower tones so my deep voice is perfect. But Siri on the Mac?
![]()
Now, you’ll need to turn your Mac into an always-listening machine using an Accessibility command. This requires two keywords, a trigger word to launch dictation, then a second keyword to launch Siri. Head back to the System Preferences main menu and select the Accessibility option.
Coming some day, the rumors say, but when? I can’t answer that.On the other hand, the system that sends your voicewaves up to Apple’s centralized processing system and returns text is indeed available on Mac systems as well as the millions of iOS devices out there. It just doesn’t have a personality (or should I say “personality” with quotes?) and won’t chat with you. It just listens and converts your words into text.To use it on your MacBook Air, for example, jump into TextEdit — though it works with any app once it’s enabled — and create a new document. Then look for “Start Dictation” on the Edit menu:There’s a bit of setup involved, however, so you’ll need to authorize your Mac system to send not just the audio waveforms of what you’ve said but also some additional data for its remote analysis. First approve the facility itself:Then approve it also sending some personalized data to Apple’s central system:Good with it all? So I click “Enable Dictation” andNothing appears to happen.
![]() ![]()
A developer is tapping Siri's brain for dictation.AvatronTyping with your hands is so retro.Own an and Mac computer? Check out a new hands-free typing app called.There are no public APIs for using the Siri voice-activated assistant for dictation, so developer Avatron found a way to control Siri and convert speech into text. The text then transfers to the corresponding Mac (with OS X 10.6.8 or higher) running the Air Dictate Receiver app.This means you can turn your phone into a speech recognition microphone and input text into Mail, Word, Pages, and whatever other app loves text.While many speech-recognition programs exist for Mac computers, I suppose it is somewhat splendid to use a phone instead of a conventional microphone or headset. Would you really use your phone to type often, though?
![]() Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2023
Categories |