Tip: When dictation is active simply say 'Show Commands' to get a pop-up window that shows a list of well over 50 categorized Selection, Navigation, Editing, Formatting and System commands you can speak during your session.ĭISCONTINUED: Dragon Systems Pro Speech Recognition Software To find these, you have to go to a completely different prefs pane: Apple System Preferences > Accessibility > Scroll down to Dictation category and then click the 'Dictation Commands.' button to see all that are available. Over time, Apple has also expanded the additional Dictation Commands available to help you navigage, format, punctuate, and get expected results. Checkbox 'Use Enhanced Dictation' if available (depending on your OSX version) to 'Allow offline use and continuous dictation with live feedback' To take advantage of this: Visit Apple's System Preferences > Dictation & Speech pane. With the main vocabulary database now resident on your Mac, you can perform continuous dictation anywhere, anytime. Before, your voice signal pattern was limited to 30 max seconds of spoken word, transmitted up to Apple's servers, interpreted, and then returned to your application window as text after a slight delay. It also made Mac speech to text translation much faster. But most notable was adding OFFLINE capabilities by downloading a 700+MB file to your Macintosh and making internet access optional. In OSX Mavericks and later versions, Apple began supporting more non-English languages. Initially, Apple's Dictation Services were online only: A live internet connection was required to access it's online vocabulary and translation databases. With the incorporation of Siri, now in recent MacOS Mojave and Sierra, a suprisingly capable set of core dictation and recognition functions are available to any Mac user. Free dictation software for Mac was included beginning with OSX Mountain Lion, then refined and improved in OSX Yosemite, Mavericks and ElCapitan.

The free voice recognition software built into Apple's operating system is a great way to explore speech to text functionality on your Macintosh at no expense. OSX Speech Recognition Apps : Free And Paid Want to experience the time-saving benefits of speech recognition on your Macintosh? With both no cost and commercial Mac dictation software available you can try it out and see how it fits into your workflow - then decide if advanced command and control functionality is worth investing in and adding to your OSX productivity application arsenal.

Dictation software free