Dictation software for Mac?

[rachelmanija]

Does this even exist in a form usable for writers? Dragon no longer works on Macs.

Comments

[recessional]

https://machow2.com/best-dictation-software-mac/

This has a few other options listed but the first one is “use a virtual windows environment to use Dragon”.

[rivkat]

My spouse says the built in software on current MacOS works for him, though I don't know if you'd be on the same OS.

[sholio]

There's a built-in one on the Mac - here's how to turn it on. (Might be different depending on what version of the OS you have?) Word also has a built-in dictation mode; it's under "Edit -> Start Dictation). I haven't tried either of these, but they both look pretty simple to use - especially with Word, all you have to do is just turn it on and try it; there's a similar dictation toggle in Pages, from what I understand. So you could see if either of those meets your needs.

[sineala]

I will second (third?) that MacOS native dictation is pretty good now -- it's better than Dragon ever was for me because Dragon wouldn't let me dictate obscenities, which really put a damper on my creative writing when I couldn't type. Depending on the OS and model that you have, regular text dictation can be activated by using either a dedicated function key (it's F5 on my M1 Air) or earlier versions will have a different command -- on my old Mac, it was hitting Fn twice.

If you need system voice control in addition to text dictation, you can turn that on in System Preferences > Accessibility > Motor > Voice Control. It works pretty well these days although as far as I can tell they took away the ability for you to set a wake word for it (e.g., "Computer, scroll down"), which was a thing I liked about previous versions.

[zeborah]

I went to turn on the native version to test whether it deals with non-USAn accents any better than it used to, and remembered why I haven't turned it on before: everything you dictate gets sent to Apple to be converted to text, along with a bunch of other information about you like the names of your contacts etc. Aside from privacy issues, this implies that it requires a constant internet connection. Sigh. I miss the days when you could just pay money to buy software that would do what you wanted.

[carbonel]

In the unlikely event that a Windows 7 laptop that doesn't hold a charge but works fine when plugged in would be a possible solution to your issues, I think I have one available.