Remember MacSpeech Dictate and Dragon Dictate? Once they were the methods you had to use for dictation on your Mac. Now it’s something you can do with an Apple desktop or laptop right out of the box.
Jan 21, 2019 In October 2018, Nuance announced that it has discontinued Dragon Professional Individual for Mac and will support it for only 90 days from activation in the US or 180 days in the rest of the world. The continuous speech-to-text software was. DragonDictate, Dragon Dictate, or Dragon for Mac is proprietary speech recognition software. The older program, DragonDictate, was originally developed by Dragon Systems for Microsoft Windows. It has now been replaced by Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Windows, and has since been acquired by Nuance Communications.
But first a little history. MacSpeech Dictate was a speech recognition program developed for Mac OS X (which is now, of course, simply macOS). The first version of MacSpeech Dictate was released in March 2008 after being showcased at the Macworld Conference & Expo (anyone remember those?) in 2008 and winning the Macworld 2008 Best Of Show award.
On September 20, 2010, Nuance Communications, which acquired MacSpeech in February 2010, released a new version of the product, renaming it “Dragon Dictate for Mac.”
Mac support for the product was dropped in October 2018 several years after Apple added “built-in” dictation capabilities for the platform via its own Dictation feature, which converts your spoken words into text.
Setting up Dictation
Setting up Dictation is easy. Choose Apple () menu > System Preferences, click Keyboard, then click Dictation. Turn on Dictation, then you must choose:
![Mac Mac](/uploads/1/3/4/0/134052147/292923127.jpg)
° Whether to use Enhanced Dictation, which lets you use dictation when you’re not connected to the Internet. More on that in a sec.
° Your language and dialect. Some languages, such as English, have multiple dialects such as my Southern accent.
° The keyboard shortcut you want to use to start start dictating.
° The microphone you wish to use; your choices will be shown from the pop-up menu below the microphone icon.
There’s also another, faster way. In macOS Sierra and higher, you can ask Siri to “turn on Dictation” for you. Don’t be confused. Siri isn’t the same as Dictation, but you can ask the personal digital assistant to compose short messages, such as email and text messages.
When you turn on Dictation, you can use your voice to enter text on your Mac. You can also use dictation commands to tell your Mac what to do, like ”undo that” or ”select the previous sentence.”
Most dictation commands turn on automatically when you turn on Enhanced Dictation. Turn on Dictation, then select “Use Enhanced Dictation.” You can now get a list of commands and select the ones that you want to use. There’s also another method:
A list of dictation commands opens. Use the checkboxes to turn commands on or off. Click a command to see which phrases work with that command. For example, “Undo that” works with several phrases, including “Undo this” and “Scratch that.”
Select “Enable advanced commands” to get additional commands.
How to use Dictation
To make your Mac listen for Dictation commands, press the keyboard shortcut for starting dictation. The default shortcut is “Fn Fn” (press the Fn key twice). Alternatively, you can turn on the option “Enable the dictation keyword phrase,” which is next to the Dictation Commands button. You can then speak the dictation keyword phrase to let your Mac know that the next thing you say after the keyword phrase will be a dictation command.
You can then speak any of the phrases that work with a dictation command. You can even say “Show commands” to open a window that shows you all the availableDictation commands.
Now that you’re ready to dictate, open a document or text field and put the insertion point at the spot where you want to dictate text. Press “Fn Fn” or choose “Edit > Start Dictation.”
You can tell if your Mac is listening if it’s showing a microphone in the left or right of the page, aligned with the insertion point. If you’ve enabled advanced dictation commands, the microphone appears in the lower-right corner of your screen, and you can drag it to another position.
Say the words that you want your Mac to type. The more you use the feature, the more it learns the characteristics of your voice and the better it works.
How to turn off notifications on mac for imessage. When you’re finished dictating, click “Done” below the microphone icon, press Fn once, or switch to another window.
Create your own commands
Once you become comfortable using Dictation, you may wish to create your own commands. Select “Enable advanced commands,” and a “+” Add button appears beneath the list of commands. Click it to add an “undefined command” to the list of commands.
Video editing software for mac free. Click the undefined command to select it, then configure these options:
° When I say: Enter the word or phrase that you want to speak to perform the action.
Dragon For Apple Computers
° While using: Choose whether your Mac performs the action only when you’re using a particular app.
° Perform: Choose the action to perform. You can open a Finder item, open a URL, paste text, paste data from the clipboard, press a keyboard shortcut, select a menu item, or run an Automator workflow.
There you go. Now you’re a regular Dictate-or on your Mac.
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DragonDictate, Dragon Dictate, or Dragon for Mac is proprietary speech recognition software. The older program, DragonDictate, was originally developed by Dragon Systems for Microsoft Windows. It has now been replaced by Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Windows, and has since been acquired by Nuance Communications. Dragon Dictate for Mac 2.0 (originally named MacSpeech Dictate[1]) is supported only on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Nuance's other products for Mac include MacSpeech Scribe.
Original DragonDictate[edit]
DragonDictate for Windows was the original speech recognition application from Dragon Systems and used discrete speech where the user must pause between speaking each word. The first version, 1.0 was available only through a few distribution and support partners. It included a Shurecardioid microphone headset. Later it was replaced by Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which allows continuous speech recognition and correction and training of words via the keyboard. NaturallySpeaking remains a Windows-only program, and since 2016 distributes in Version 15. DragonDictate for Windows is still available but has not been updated since Windows 98 was the current operating system.
Dragon Dictate for Mac[edit]
Dragon Dictate for Mac 2.0, an upgrade for MacSpeech Dictate, was announced on September 20, 2010 by Nuance Communications, the developer of MacSpeech products. The upgrade incorporates some of the features of NaturallySpeaking into the MacSpeech software. Dragon Dictate for Mac lacks other NaturallySpeaking features, such as training mis-recognized words by simply re-typing them using the keyboard. An early review by David Pogue notes,
I’m thrilled about the power, the control, the speed and the accuracy of Dragon Dictate. It does, however, have some room for improvement.
For example, in the dictation software world, teaching the software to know its location in your text document is a huge challenge. If you never touch the mouse, the program always knows where it is in the text — because it has deposited all that text itself.
But if you click to edit somewhere, it’s blind. It no longer knows where it is in the document.
In Windows, Nuance has used some clever tricks to overcome this problem in the most important programs, like Word and Outlook. On the Mac, however, the program has no idea what you’ve done manually, by clicking. So you can say something like “select fishmonger,” and the program correctly selects that word. But if you then say “italicize that” or “capitalize that,” the program operates on the wrong words, italicizing or capping something a mile away from the selection. Bizarre.
(This problem doesn’t happen in TextEdit or Dictate’s own included word processor.)[2] Firefox mac os 10.7 5.
In October 2018 Nuance announced that it was dropping Macintosh support for its products.[3]
See also[edit]
Dragon Dictation For Mac Free
Notable users[edit]
Peter David - American writer of comic books, novels, television, movies and video games. David began using DragonDictate following his stroke in December 2012.[4][5]
Dragon Dictation For Mac Review
References[edit]
![Dragon naturallyspeaking for mac canada Dragon naturallyspeaking for mac canada](/uploads/1/3/4/0/134052147/879008716.png)
- ^Nuance - Dragon for Mac
- ^Finally, Professional Dictation Software for the Mac David Pogue, September 23, 2010
- ^[1] Mac users burned after Nuance drops Dragon speech to text softwareOctober 30, 2018
- ^David, Kathleen (January 15, 2013). 'Your Semi Daily Peter David Report for Jan 15 2012'. peterdavid.net.
- ^'Peter David, Post-Stroke, Returns Home'. startrek.com. February 11, 2013.
Dragon Dictation For Mac Download
External links[edit]
- Official website for Nuance Communications
The DragonDictate / Speech Recognition FAQ— (OBSOLETE: Last modified April 9, 1996 at 8:02:31 AM EDT (= 12:02 pm UTC))
Dragon Dictation For Mac Free Trial
Dragon Naturally Speaking Free Download
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