MacMost Now 744: Dictation With Mountain Lion

The new dictation feature of Mountain Lion lets you speak short sentences and it will translate to text. You can use dictation in apps like TextEdit and Pages. Unlike third-party solutions, it doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles. But it is useful for tweets, text messages and other short bits of text.

Comments: 13 Responses to “MacMost Now 744: Dictation With Mountain Lion”

    Suzanne
    12 years ago

    I have a pre-Lion Mac keyboard. What does the FN key look like?

      12 years ago

      It simply has the text "fn" on it. Its location depends on the Mac model you have, or the keyboard model if it is a separate keyboard. Usually at the bottom left corner. On extended keyboards it could be with the home, end, page up, page down and delete keys above the arrows.

        Suzanne
        12 years ago

        AhHah! Thanks!!!

    Larry Pertl
    12 years ago

    I watched the video and tried it with pages and it worked great, however when I finished speaking I clicked on the done area and it filled in what I said. I can not get it to work with the short cut and have to go into edit every time and select start dictation. Wanted to know why it won't work with the short cut method, but works great the other way?

      12 years ago

      Not sure. Check your preferences to make sure you are using the right shortcut.

    dominique
    12 years ago

    Hi Gary,

    I think you made a mistake, the iPod touch does not have Siri, I have an iPod touch 4º generation and i don´t see Siri. Am i right?
    Keep the good work!

      12 years ago

      The iPhone 4S is the only device with Siri. The iPad will get it with iOS 6.

    Johnny Robish
    12 years ago

    Another fantastic lesson Gary! Thanks so much!

    Sudhakar
    12 years ago

    Another excellent lesson, Thank you so much

    Carlos
    12 years ago

    Gary, thanks for this amazing useful service you provide.
    I have been using dictation on my MacBook Pro retina since I got it and hardly ever have to type anymore. The voice recognition is amazingly good and I'm only using the computer's microphone. In fact the recognition is much better than the one I get at my hospital dictating medical reports with powerscribe.

    Bill Beers
    12 years ago

    How does one make ML dictation spell the word 'period'? Is the only way to actually spell it out?

    Thanks,
    Bill

      12 years ago

      I don't think there is a way. I get the feeling that dictation is really meant for short things like messages. It doesn't have the deep features you find in Dragon and other tools.

      John Pollard
      12 years ago

      If I say the word period twice it seems to work, But it puts a second period in and I just edit that out by hand. It's clunky no doubt.

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