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.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to use the new Dictation Spelling Mode in iOS 16 and macOS Ventura.
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So there is a new mode in Dictation that allows you to spell out words and even use digits and numbers and things like that. But it is not in the regular Dictation. Remember there is two different Dictation Modes both on the iPhone and iOS and on the Mac. There's Regular Dictation and there is Voice Control. Regular dictation is what you get on the iPhone when you're in an app and you're just typing and you tap the little microphone button at the bottom right hand corner. That goes into Dictation Mode and you can do basic quick dictation there. You won't have Spelling Mode there. In the advanced Voice Control is where you have it. 
So you want to go into Settings and there you want to go into Accessibility and then look for Voice Control. Of course you need to turn it on. BUT we won't turn it on just now. Let's just dig down in here and see where this is located. If you go to Customized Commands and go to a list of all the Commands you could search for them, you could look at them by category. There's a set here called Dictation. This gives you some of the most powerful dictation commands including Dictation Mode, Command Mode, and Spelling Mode. So Dictation Mode is what you normally use with Voice Control. It means you're typing text you can dictate and when you're not typing text you can issue Voice Control Commands. Some of these other things that were up here and in some of these other categories. 
If you go to Command Mode it actually will ignore dictation and only allow you to do commands. Spelling Mode is a temporary mode where you can now go in and spell out each letter and it will type it rather than trying to interpret what you say as words. So to Exit Spelling Mode you would then say Dictation Mode. 
Now back here at the top level of Accessibility I've made it easy for myself to turn On and Off Voice Control. At the bottom is Accessibility Shortcut and I've made sure that Voice Control is one of the options there. So now if I triple click the side button I can easily turn On and Off Voice Control and be able to try out this Spelling Mode. So in Notes here I'm going to triple click the side button and then turn On Voice Control. Then I'm going to do regular dictation. It should be in Dictation Mode by default when you start it. Then I'm going to initiate Spelling Mode and spell something out. "this is regular dictation mode period Spelling Mode a b c 1 2 3 dictation mode". Notice that when I switched to Spelling Mode it actually showed that little abc symbol to show that I was in it. Notice it also didn't bother with doing nice things like putting extra spaces so I don't have a space after the period before I started my spelling. But you can actually use other commands like space or delete while doing Spelling Mode. Let's try that. "this is something I'm going to spell colon spelling mode tap space capital a capital b c x y capital z delete that 1 2 3 period dictation mode. 
So you can use a lot of those other commands while in Spelling Mode. If you are already using Voice Control a lot for dictation you're probably familiar with those. If not you really have to review that list in the Settings and practice using them.
Now iPad OS 16 isn't out yet but when it is out you'll have the same functionality there and of course the same when macOS Ventura comes out. So on macOS Ventura you'll want to go to System Settings and then Accessibility and then you want to go to Voice Control. Of course you can turn it On and Off there. You can review the commands here as well and find the Spelling Mode command there. Let's turn it On. You'll see it works the same way. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog with the number spelling mode spacebar x y z 1 2 3 period. Dictation Mode. 
Now some tips for using this. You definitely need to speak slowly. You can't just rattle off a bunch of letters and numbers. You have to enunciate each letter. So using it isn't going to necessarily be fast. If you do have special words like names or terms commonly used in your business or field of study that you want to add to the Vocabulary you have the ability in Voice Control to add vocabulary words both on the iPhone and on the Mac. So do that instead and try to be able to just say the words and have it spelled out especially if it is something you're using all the time. 
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

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

Razvan Mihai

2 years 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

Gary Rosenzweig

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Robert Bailey

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.

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.

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"

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.

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

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

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

Dawn Gibson

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!

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.

Comments Closed.

Dictation Spelling Mode On the iPhone and Mac

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

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