In macOS Sierra and higher, you can ask Siri to “turn on Dictation” for you. ° The microphone you wish to use your choices will be shown from the pop-up menu below the microphone icon. ° The keyboard shortcut you want to use to start start dictating. Some languages, such as English, have multiple dialects such as my Southern accent. ° Whether to use Enhanced Dictation, which lets you use dictation when you’re not connected to the Internet. Choose Apple () menu > System Preferences, click Keyboard, then click Dictation. 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. 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.” 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.

Now it’s something you can do with an Apple desktop or laptop right out of the box.īut first a little history. MacSpeech Dictate was a speech recognition program developed for Mac OS X (which is now, of course, simply macOS).

Remember MacSpeech Dictate and Dragon Dictate? Once they were the methods you had to use for dictation on your Mac.

Voice dictation software for mac