Harness the power of dictation to make it easier to create documents on Mac
IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes
YOU WILL LEARN How to make the most of the dictation features in macOS Sonoma
YOU’LL NEED macOS 14 or later
Being able to dictate documents, emails, text messages and more has many benefits – from helping speed up the process for people with physical impairments to giving your fingers a rest. It can be a boon to those of us who remain one-finger typists and, with macOS Sonoma, the experience is now better than ever.
The big difference is that you’re able to dictate, type and edit without having to keep turning dictation on and off. For example, you could dictate a sentence, use your keyboard to amend a couple of mistakes, add another sentence then go back to dictating. The more you use the function, the better it becomes at recognising your voice and vocabulary too. Dictation works across all apps and services with no limit on how long you can continue talking for – dictations can be of any length! It also enables you to use a host of languages and many different commands, putting you in full control of your words. David Crookes
HOW TO Enable and use dictation
Genius tip!
Sharing audio recordings with Apple? You can delete them by going to System
Settings > Siri & Spotlight > Delete Siri
& Dictation History.
Switch on dictation
Click the Apple menu and choose System Settings. Next, scroll down to Keyboard in the sidebar and scroll down to Dictation in the right-hand pane. Toggle the Dictation button and select Enable when prompted.
Choose a microphone
Decide whether you want to share your audio recordings with Apple, then peruse the settings. You can select Microphone Source to choose an input device (to let your Mac decide, choose Automatic).
CONTINUED… Enable and use dictation
If there’s a mic function key on your keyboard, use that to start dictation. If there isn’t, or if you want a different key combo, select Shortcut and either choose a key press or select Customise to create your own.
To make life easier, you may want to ensure ‘Auto-p
