Dictation Spelling Mode On the iPhone and Mac

A new mode in iOS 16 and macOS Ventura lets you spell out words and other phrases letter by letter.

Comments: 16 Responses to “Dictation Spelling Mode On the iPhone and Mac”

    Razvan Mihai
    1 year ago

    Great tutorial, Gary. The dictation feature in iOS seems to turn the first character of a sentence to lowercase unless you turn on auto-capitalization, a feature I did not get in the habit of using. Is this a feature or a bug? Is there a way around this to avoid using auto-capitalization? Thanks

    1 year ago

    Razvan: Not sure what it is you are trying to do. Why not use auto-capitalization if that is what you want to do?

    Razvan Mihai
    1 year ago

    What I am trying to do is to use the dictation feature without auto-capitalization.

    In this scenario, when you start dictating a new sentence, the system shows the first letter of the first word in capital letters only to convert it to lowercase when you insert the full stop manually or dictate it.

    Do you have your auto-cap on? It seems this is the only way to have dictation working.

    1 year ago

    Razvan: Sorry. I'm not following you. You have two choices: "Capitalize words automatically" on or off. Pick which one works best for you.

    Simon Carr
    1 year ago

    Great presentation, as usual, however I can't find Spelling Mode in Voice Control commands. Am running Ventura.

    1 year ago

    Simon: Is your Mac set to U.S. English? That's a requirement right now.

    Simon Carr
    1 year ago

    No - U.K. That would explain it. Separated by a common language. Many thanks, Gary.

    Robert Bailey
    11 months ago

    Is there a way you can use Voice Control to get a specific response when dictating? The example I am interested in is when I dictate and say my wife's name "Jona"dictation frequently spells it as my son's name "Jonah." I have tried to use "Phonetic first name" and spelled it letter for letter on their contact cards, but dictation still misses it most of the time. It would be great if I could dictate "wife's name" or "son's name" and it would put in the correct spelling.

    11 months ago

    Robert: Yes, you can kinda do that. Not sure how well it will work for you, but if you go to System Settings, Accessibility, Voice Control and then click Commands... and then add a special command for "wife's name" to Paste Text and then her name, then it should work. A little odd to do in practice, but give it a try.

    Robert Bailey
    11 months ago

    Hmmm, must have done something wrong; I created custom commands for "wife's name" (Action: Insert "Jona") and when I dictate it duplicates the command, thus: "Wife's name Wife's name"

    11 months ago

    Robert: Not sure where you could be going wrong there. You said "Insert" but the action to be performed is called "Paste Text" so make sure you do that.

    Robert Bailey
    11 months ago

    "Paste text" is not the Action available when I create a new command, just "Insert Text," "Run Customer Gesture" and "Run Shortcut"

    11 months ago

    Robert: You aren't looking in the right place then. (Or maybe you are using an older version of macOS?)

    Robert Bailey
    11 months ago

    Not on my Mac--iOS 16.4.1; that explains why!

    Dawn Gibson
    10 months ago

    Hi Gary, great video. I like Simon can not get spelling mode to work. Myndefault language was UK English. I have changed this, set US English as my default and restarted word. I can see that English US is the current language as a result, but 'spelling mode' is still not being recognised by voice control.
    Any advice. Right hand recently post op and supposed to work this week!

    10 months ago

    Dawn: Maybe try it in something else besides Word, as Microsoft apps are always a little "different" than others. See if ti works in Pages, for instance. If not, then work with Apple Support to get to the bottom of it.

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