If you would like to execute hands-free tasks on your Mac, I highly recommend learning to use the voice command features of Dragon Dictate.
Thanks right, Dragon Dictate is more than a voice-to-text program, it comes pre-installed with hundreds of default commands for opening, hiding, and quitting applications, downloading webpages, opening and closing folders, saving documents, putting the computer to sleep, hiding and showing the Dock, and lots more.
Custom Commands
You can also create custom commands for nearly any task you perform on your Mac. Dragon Dictate provides settings for different types of commands, including opening applications, activating menu items, jumping to specified URLs, inserting snippets of text, opening files or folders, triggering keyboard shortcuts, running Automator and AppleScript workflows, and executing Shell Scripts.
For example, instead of using the keyboard shortcut for taking a screenshot, I simply issue the command, “screenshot,” and Dragon Dictate triggers the shortcut for me.
Dragon Dictate and Keyboard Maestro
Since Keyboard Maestro also creates AppleScript scripts for each of its macros, that feature allows you to copy individual scripts into a DD voice command. For example, I have a KM macro for inserting my Mac administrative password. I imputed the script for that macro into DD, and now whenever I need the password typed, I just issue the voice command, “admin password.”
KM macros can often execute tasks that DD is not cable of doing. And the two programs work great together.
Using Dragon Dictate
I’ve been a long time user of DD, and I have to admit that as a voice-to-text application, it can be a little difficult to use. However, since I have DD open all the time, I use it off and on for dictating text. I can’t voice dictate full articles using DD, because it’s simply does not always perform as well as I would like. However, the voice commands for computer tasks work great and I use them as much as I can.
I’m able to use DD voice commands for three reasons:
1. I work at home in a quiet office with no other people around most of the time during the day.
2. I use the USB 3-in-1 TableMike, which is a noise canceling mic that hears voice commands while music is playing in the background.
3. And because I have practiced using DD for many years. Using voice-to-text and voice commands take practice. You can’t give up because it doesn’t work the first few times you use it, or when it doesn’t work 100% accurately.
Note: Mac OS Yosemite also features voice commands, but they are somewhat more difficult to set up, and the feature mutes any other sounds coming from your computer when you activate the voice command feature. For more information, see the article I wrote on MakeUseOf.com.
Let me know what you think about using voice commands on your Mac. Have you ever tried it, and if so how well does it work for you? I will be adding additional tutorials for using Dragon Dictate commands in future articles.
Nice overview for Dragon Dictate. I actually bought it because of your Review, takes a bit to learn, but it works very well. Often i didn’t need a separate mic, the build in in mic in my macbook pro retina works quite well. If it gets louder in my environement i take my sennheiser headset.
Thanks and hope to see more tips for DD!
Awesome, Bernie. Yeah, you’re going to like dictating commands. There will be times when you’re on a row just getting things done without using keyboard shortcuts or clicking stuff. Are you also using Keyboard Maestro?
Yes, Keyboard Maestro is also in my Toolbelt. I’m a Scripter since the early Days of System 7, used Dave Winers Userland Frontier, later AppleScript with Facespan, etc. automagically building catalogs with pictures, barcodes etc. 😉
While I know this is an old post, is the Dragon software for Mac still good enough to use well? I’ve only seen bad reviews for the mac version online.
Hi Michael. I would suggest purchasing Dragon Dictate because it hasn’t been updated by Nuance in over three years. Though I still use DD on my Mac, some of it features simply no longer work because it hasn’t been updated in a while.
With the next release of macOS, there’s supposed to be an improved voice-to-text and voice commands features. So we’ll have to wait and see how good it is. It’s really sad that Nuance discontinued support of DD.