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- Best Voice Dictation For Mac
- Voice Dictation App For Mac Windows 10
Nov 06, 2017 Windows 10’s Fall Creators Update makes voice dictation much easier to use. Now, you can immediately begin dictation by pressing a key Windows+H on your keyboard. You don’t have to dig through the Control Panel and set anything up first. In an app on your Mac, place the insertion point where you want the dictated text to appear. Press the dictation keyboard shortcut or choose Edit Start Dictation. When the feedback window shows a microphone icon with a fluctuating loudness indicator, or you hear the tone that signals your Mac is ready for keyboard dictation, dictate your text.
Have you ever wished you could write down every idea in your head, regardless of where you are? Siri can be great to take a quick note or make a quick reminder, but when it comes to long-form text, Siri just doesn't cut the mustard.
If you're tired of typing everything out and would rather use your voice to dictate your text, check out these great apps for transcribing voice to text.
Evernote
Voice Dictation App For Mac Iphone
Evernote is a robust note-taking app that has long been recommended for note-taking and document sharing, and best of all, you can use your voice to type.You can share notes, annotate images, and collaborate on notes so that you can be as productive as possible. If you just need a note taker, Evernote's perfect for that. If you need a robust note-taking/presentation making/word processing app for business or school, then Evernote is perfect too.
It may not have all the features PowerPoint or Word have, but it'll certainly get you started. Plus, you can also sync across all of your devices so that you have access to your ideas no matter where you are or what device you're using.
Evernote is free to use, but you can purchase various levels of storage so that you can upload more, use it on an unlimited number of devices, access your notebooks offline, and much more.
Just Press Record
Whether it's a conversation between you and your friends that you want on record or you just want to get some quick thoughts on paper, Just Press Record lets you record anything you want and transcribe it into text.
You can choose to save your files locally or on iCloud so all your devices can access it and there are no recording time limits. Plus, you can even record from your Apple Watch with one tap if you use the Apple Watch complication.
What's really cool about Just Press Record is you can use the built-in microphone on your device or use an external mic hooked up through the lightning port. This makes Just Press Record a great tool for podcasters!
Dragon Anywhere
Nuance Communications has been making their Dragon series of speech-to-text software for years, and they have really done a great job at making it better over time. Dragon Anywhere is the mobile version of its flagship dictation software that has been making desktop users' lives easier.
Not only can you talk to Dragon Anywhere and it will instantly transcribe your words, you can also edit, customize your dictionary, and search through your documents and fill things in, all with the power of your voice.
You can upload all your notes and documents to plenty of cloud storage apps like iCloud or Dropbox making it easy to access all your files across your devices.
The app is free to download, but there is a subscription fee to unlock all the useful features.
Call Recording by NoNotes
Do you take a lot of business calls that you wish you could recall for later? Call Recording by NoNotes will let you record any call and give you the option to have it transcribed.
You can record any and all outgoing or incoming calls and save the audio recordings and even get them transcribed at any time after recording the call.
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The app is free to download and will let you record 20 minutes of phone calls for free every month. If you do want to transcribe your calls or record for more time, you'll need to pay for it.
Day One Journal
Journaling is not only a great way for us to reflect on our memories and life events, but it's also handy for notes and other random thoughts that we have throughout the day. Day One is an excellent app for keeping a digital diary for yourself, and it has some useful voice recording features.
With Day One, you can dictate a new entry with just your voice. The speech recognition that is built-in is pretty good, and will do a nice job of transcribing your voice into text for whatever you need to record. There is also the ability to just record audio clips themselves, which is fantastic if you want to remember important audio notes, or perhaps baby's first words.
Day One is free to download and use, but you will get even more out of the app with the Day One Premium. A subscription gets you unlimited journals, unlimited photos, videos, and audio for each entry, unlimited cloud storage, and more.
Transcribe - Speech to Text
Transcribe is a simple app that gets the job done, no matter what situation. Just launch it, start talking, and Transcribe does the rest.
With Transcribe, you get almost-instant Artificial Intelligence transcription, and there's no lag between the speech and the transcription itself. You can transcribe voice memos and even videos, and then export that text transcription into a third-party text editing app. It even allows you to search through transcriptions, sync across multiple devices, and it supports 89 languages.
The free download includes a trial, which allows you to record up to 15 minutes. If you find it useful, you can purchase more recording time through in-app purchases.
Which apps do you use?
Let us know in the comments!
August 2019: Added Day One Journal and Transcribe to the list.
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Yosemite continues to improve on speech recognition in Macintoshes by offering a host of tools that let you get more work done in a shorter amount of time as well as provide voice control for those Mac owners who have difficulty with or are unable to use a traditional keyboard, mouse, or trackpad.
Before you start using Dictation, make sure you have a microphone with which to import sound into your Mac. Many current Macintosh models have a built-in microphone. An Intel iMac sports a microphone built into the monitor. MacBooks have a similar microphone built into the screen.
If your Mac doesn’t have a microphone, though, you can easily connect one via the microphone jack. (Apple’s line of Thunderbolt displays also includes a built-in camera and microphone.)
If you’re looking for the best quality audio input from your microphone for use with speech recognition (as well as Messages and FaceTime), check out a microphone with a USB connection. You’ll get far better sound quality than afforded by either your Mac’s built-in microphone or a microphone that connects to your audio jack.
Two different panes in System Preferences make up the speech settings of OS X: the Dictation Commands (which appear in the Accessibility pane) and the Dictation and Text to Speech settings (which appear in the Dictation & Speech pane).
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The basics of Dictation
The standard Dictation feature in Yosemite is yet another idea borrowed from the iOS world — in this case, the iPad, where Dictation made its debut. You can use Dictation to enter the text you speak directly into a text box in any application that supports this feature.
To use the standard Dictation feature, open System Preferences and click the Dictation & Speech icon. Then, on the Dictation tab select the On radio button.
If you have more than one microphone available, click the pop-up menu button at the left side of the pane and choose the microphone you want to use with Dictation. By default, pressing the Function (Fn) key twice starts the text entry; however, you can click the Shortcut pop-up menu to choose another shortcut key. Note that you can also specify the language your Mac uses with Dictation.
When you’re ready to use Dictation, click in the spot where you would normally begin typing, press the keyboard shortcut, and begin speaking. You can press the keyboard shortcut again to turn off Dictation.
The Feedback window
After you activate Dictation with the shortcut key, you instantly see the Feedback window. You can click and drag the window to position it anywhere on your Desktop.
The Feedback window includes a single button and visual cues of its own:
Microphone Level Meter: The microphone icon in the Feedback window doubles as a meter, showing you how loud the input level to your microphone is.
Visual Indicator: If a Dictation Command is recognized, the Feedback window displays the command. (You learn more about Dictation Commands shortly.) Like handwriting recognition, 100 percent speech recognition isn’t a reality on any computer at this point, so sometimes it helps to have feedback. Otherwise, you might feel silly shouting at your machine while it sits there doing nothing. (Or perhaps not, if you’re into inexpensive anger management.)
Done Button: Click this button to exit Dictation.
The Dictation Command controls
Dictation Commands are far more powerful from the standard Yosemite Dictation feature, which simply types what you speak into a field or document. Dictation Commands provide you with true voice control over your Mac: Activate Dictation in the normal manner, but instead of speaking simple text, you speak a Dictation Command phrase.
Your Mac translates what you said — and if it understands the phrase, it then performs an action associated with that phrase.
To get started with true voice control in OS X, you must first install and enable Enhanced Dictation. Display the Dictation tab again, but this time click the Use Enhanced Dictation check box. Because Yosemite has to download the Enhanced Dictation software from Apple — a download of over 1GB at the time of this writing — this is a good time to check your email (or perhaps top off your soda).
There’s another good reason to install Enhanced Dictation: With Enhanced Dictation enabled, your Mac no longer requires an active Internet connection to use Dictation. (A great help to laptop owners who often find themselves “off the grid” and without the Internet.)
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After the Enhanced Dictation software has been installed, click the Show All button in the System Preferences window and click the Accessibility icon. Click the Dictation entry in the list to the left, and then click Dictation Commands to display the settings shown.
The Dictation Commands list in the Accessibility pane displays the default speech recognition commands in a number of categories at the left side of the window:
User: These are commands that you create yourself. (Note that you must select the Enable Advanced Commands check box to create your own commands.) To create a new command, click the Add button (marked with a plus sign) at the bottom of the list.
Yosemite prompts you for the custom command phrase (what you actually say), the application that will recognize your custom command, and the action that the application will take when it recognizes the custom command. To save the command, click Done.
You can delete a custom command from the User category by selecting it in the list and clicking the Delete button, which is marked with a minus sign.
Selection: These commands allow you to select words, sentences, paragraphs, or the entire text of a document.
Navigation: Here you’ll find commands that whisk you to the beginning or end of a selection, word, sentence, or paragraph in a document. You’ll also find a number of commands for scrolling, moving between fields and controls, and even pressing the Esc key.
Editing: As you might have surmised, these commands control the familiar cut, copy, and paste functions, as well as delete, capitalize, and redo/undo.
Formatting: Need to bold, italicize, or underline? These commands fit the bill.
Application: These commands allow you to switch between applications, quit or hide an application, or display a specific menu.
Document: These commands cover the common actions you’ll take with any document, like opening or saving, minimizing, and closing a document window.
System: Use these commands to perform a Spotlight search, open the Dictation pane in System Preferences, and stop your Mac from listening for commands.
It’s important to note that you don’t have to press the Dictation shortcut key before speaking a Dictation Command; Yosemite can recognize inline commands in continuous speech — meaning that you can begin dictating text into a document, speak a Dictation Command where necessary, and then return to speaking text!
The Dictation Commands window
Because Yosemite offers so many Dictation Commands, OS X provides you with the Dictation Commands window as a quick reference. The Dictation Commands window contains a single listing of all commands that you might speak at any given time. (Note that the Dictation Commands window offers the same list of commands as the Accessibility pane in System Preferences, but it’s far more convenient to access.)
To open the Dictation Commands window, press the keyboard shortcut to activate Dictation and say Show Commands.