Using Vocal Shortcuts On Mac and iPhone

The new Vocal Shortcuts Accessibility function on the Mac, iPhone and iPad allows you to create vocal commands that can trigger Shortcuts and other things just by speaking a few words.

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Video Transcript: Gary here with MacMost. Let's take a look at using Vocal Shortcuts. 
So Vocal Shortcuts is a new feature in macOS Sequoia and iOS and iPad OS 18. It basically allows you to speak a command. You don't have to say any magic word, like Siri, before hand or anything like that. You can setup these commands to trigger shortcuts or a Siri phrase. 
Let's start on the Mac. Of course you need macOS Sequoia to do this. Then you want to go to System Settings and then Accessibility. Then you want to scroll down near the bottom and you'll see a whole section just for Vocal Shortcuts. You go in here and then there's a setup button. So we're going to set this up. It's going to give us a little information here. We'll Continue and then you get this lists of things that we can do. Most of this is a list of your own shortcuts. So things that you've already setup in the Shortcuts App. You'll see one other item at the top here. We'll get to that in a minute. But let's choose one of these. 
I've got a shortcut called Add To Note. In the Shortcuts App it's right here. What it basically does is it gets the Clipboard, it gets the text from the Clipboard, since the Clipboard can contain things like Rich Text and other things, and then it's going to append that text to a note I've created called Quick Add From Clipboard. Here's that note. You can see it's empty right now. We'll move it off to the side. 
Now I'm going to use this as the action for the vocal shortcut and click continue. Now I want to enter the command. So I just need to type what it is I'm going to say. I'm just going to say, add this to notes. Then I'm going to continue. When I do it is going to ask me to say this exact phrase three times. Then it is going to use that to recognize when I say the phrase. Add this to notes; Add this to notes; Add this to notes. So it didn't have any problem with that and it says Action Is Ready. I'll continue. It gives you this screen here where you can continue or cancel with this. You can see it listed here. You can click on the i button there and that's how you would delete it. Now it's ready to go. 
I don't need to have System Settings open or anything. I now can go to some other place. Let's go to a webpage. Let's copy some text here. So I'm going to copy this sentence. Then after I do that I will try this out. Add this to notes. You can see you've got the indication there that it recognized the vocal shortcut. Then it did it. It did what the shortcut was. It's really no different than triggering the shortcut from here. But the idea is you can do it completely hands free. This is useful if you have trouble using the mouse or keyboard. But it could also be useful as just a great way to trigger shortcuts without having to go up here or remember the keyboard shortcut you set, or something like that. 
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Let's add another one. So I'm going to go through the steps again. This time I'm going to choose Grab The Screen. So in Shortcuts it's going to take a full screen screenshot, and you can see here under Show More I've got it just for the main display. Then it's going to Save the screenshot to the folder called Screenshots. Then if I look under Show More it's going to create a subpath with the word screenshot and a space and then the current date. You can customize the date format here. I've done so to make it look kind of similar to how the native screenshot functionality saves files. But I could choose something else which is one of the things that makes this useful. Notice also I put a wait 3 seconds at the beginning of this shortcut. So let's set this up. I've got Grab The Screen. Continue, and I'm going to use the same phrase Grab the Screen, and then I'm going to say it 3 times. Grab the screen; Grab the screen; Grab the screen. Okay. So I should have that one here now as well. 
I'm going to bring up the Finder and here's that Screenshots Folder that I've used. You can see there's already one in there. Let's give this a try. GrabThe Screen. You can see it delayed that 3 seconds and it took this screenshot. You can see why it delayed the 3 seconds is because there's that big window open saying the vocal shortcut was recognized. I don't want to grab that. So I had to wait 3 seconds. I probably could have done 2 seconds and it would have worked just as well. 
One thing about this is you definitely need to pause before you start the phrase. If you add it onto the end of something it doesn't seem to recognize it. Like if right now I say grab the screen it doesn't do it. But if I pause, Grab the Screen, then it will work. 
Now when you go to add an action here you get your list of shortcuts here but also you get other things as well. At the bottom you get Accessibility and there are a whole bunch of different Accessibility actions that you can add. So, for instance, you can add Invert Colors, or Turning On or Off Live Captions, or one of these other Accessibility functions. So that can be useful as well. 
Also, at the very top you get Siri Requests. However, I haven't found this to work in macOS Sequoia yet. If you use it it starts off and it asks you for a phrase. So the idea here is something that you would normally ask Siri. It can be a long phrase if you want or it could be something short. I can just type Weather and if I press Return it doesn't seem to work on any account or Mac I try it on. 
So let's switch over to the iPhone now. So on the iPhone you would set a vocal shortcut in the Settings App and then go to Accessibility. Then scroll down and it is in basically the same place. Vocal Shortcuts right there. You've got an On/Off switch for it and you can add an action here. Notice when you do so it is the same steps. You've got all of the shortcuts here that you can add. At the bottom you've got some System things. So this is more than what you have on the Mac. Like, for instance, you can have the Flashlight turned On or Off, or Mute, or Screenshot, things like that. You've got Accessibility as well. At the top here you've got Siri Requests. All the rest of this works just like it does on the Mac. So let's try Siri Requests which does seem to work very well in iOS 18. If I use this i can type a request. So let's just do something simple here. So maybe if you have friends or you do business in London you're always asking this. So you can use this as the Siri Request. Then the next thing is the phrase. Then add that in and then you have to say it three times. London time; London time; London time. Now it is ready. Continue and you can see it's added. Now we can give it a try. London time. There we go. We get that. It's not that much harder to ask Siri to do it but imagine, of course, doing a much more complex Siri Request or Shortcut and having your iPhone do it just by speaking that phrase. 
So give Siri Requests a try on your Mac in Sequoia. Let me know if it works for you. If not we'll just have to wait for a fix for that. Of course until then you can really do anything that you would do with a Siri Request in a shortcut anyway. So you can just setup the shortcuts that you need and then use Vocal Shortcuts to trigger them. Even if it is something you could already use Siri for you don't have to trigger it to bring it up. You just say that phrase and it will do it. 
Here's a fun one! Here's a two-line JAVA script program that will basically simulate the Return Key. I've called this Press Return. So in Vocal Shortcuts I'm going to add an Action and I'm going to have it choose this particular shortcut there. I'm going to call it Make It So. Then I have to speak it 3 times. Make It So; Make It So; Make It So. There we go. Now if you're wondering what this will do. Imagine I've got a dialogue box, like for instance I'm going to Save something for the first time. So I decide where it is going to be saved. Let's save this to my Documents folder. Instead of pressing the Save button I can simply press return on the keyboard. But I have a way to do that with a Vocal Shortcut now. Make It So. There we go. It works. So now you can confirm any dialogue box by issuing that phrase instead.  
Hope you found this useful Thanks for watching.

Comments: 7 Responses to “Using Vocal Shortcuts On Mac and iPhone”

Roy Whelden

1 month ago

Do you think that the battery takes a rather serious hit when Vocal Shortcuts is turned on?

Gary Rosenzweig

Roy: I haven't tested it, but everything you do uses "power" so probably, some. Test and see.

Bob Herwick

4 weeks ago

I enabled voice control, but discovered one disadvantage. If I am sitting talking with friends and have a text message I am producing the iPhone automatically picks up everything we are saying without having to press the microphone button. I finally had to turn it off as it was driving me crazy…and embarrassing since it seems to be sending the text messages without my tapping the send arrow.

Bob: You definitely need to set the phrases to something you wouldn't normally speak.

Sheldon

Thanks bunches

Ed Adams

3 weeks ago

So you are a Jeopardy fan, laughs. Is there a way to sync the actions you have made on the Mac with the iPhone/iPad?

Ed: I don't think so. See it if does it automatically. But I'd imagine they would be separate because you wouldn't want the same vocal commands to be across machines and activating in awkward situations.

Using Vocal Shortcuts On Mac and iPhone

Comments: 7 Responses to “Using Vocal Shortcuts On Mac and iPhone”

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