Dragon Dictation For Mac

Dragon Dictation for iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows

DragonDictate, Dragon Dictate, or Dragon for Mac is proprietary speech recognition software. The older program, DragonDictate, was originally developed by Dragon Systems for Microsoft Windows. It has now been replaced by Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Windows, and has since been acquired by Nuance Communications. Jul 26, 2019  If you have mobility or motor impairments, repetitive stress injuries, or you find typing on a keyboard difficult in any way, there's an alternative. Dictation lets you talk instead of type, and voice-to-text transcribes what you say into words on the screen. It's among the Mac's many accessibility. Dragon Dictate - Dictation Software. About 20 years ago Dragon used to be called 'Dragon Dictate' until the name transitioned to 'Dragon NaturallySpeaking'. Dragon Naturally Speaking has now been renamed to Dragon Professional Individual. Dragon Professional Individual is available on Windows PC only. Since making this video Nuance have discontinued Mac Dictate. The way forward will be to install a virtual Windows computer on your Mac with Parallels and run the Windows version of Dragon.

Dragon Dictation makes it possible to transform voice to text and put your thoughts down anywhere anytime. All you need is the app installed on Windows, Mac, iPhone or Android phone and your voice. Let’s have a look what Dragon software you’d better choose and how to correctly use Dragon Dictation app for smartphones.

SEE ALSO: How to Turn Audio into Text Free with VoiceBase
SEE ALSO: How to Convert Audio Files

How to Dragon Dictate on iPhone and Android

On the official Nuance Communications site you will find apps for home users, journalists and bloggers as well as apps for business users, drivers and medical workers. The one we observed is Dragon Dictation. It’s great for every day using. You can download Dragon Dictation app for iPhone or Android absolutely free or charge.

  1. Open the Dragon Dictation app.
  2. Set the Region you are in. It is required to precise the language of recognition.
  3. Choose the Tap and Dictate button and begin to dictate.
  4. When you are through, tap the Stop button. You will see a written text of your message. You can correct it using the keyboard.
  5. Now you can copy the text to carry it over to any other app.

At the same time you may publish the dictated text on Twitter, send a message or an email with it.

If you want to change the language, go to Settings and choose the right one there. You can set other features like name recognition here.

Now, let’s run a test and check what this app can actually do.

Dragon Dictation Test

To make sure that Dragon app is as brilliant as it sounds, we dictated 5 text pieces to check the quality of recognition.

1. The first one was a short phrase from a famous Lullaby:

Twinkle, twinkle, Little Star.

Great result, but that was easy.

2. The second one was a long and sophisticated tongue twister:

Whether the weather is right, or whether the weather is not

Whether the weather is warm, or whether the weather is hot,

We’ll weather the weather, whatever the weather,

Whether we like it or notVpn for mac.

As you can see, the written variant is not 100% correct.

3. The third piece is the description of Freemake Blog. We didn’t train these phrases so they looked natural with pauses and different intonation.

Mac

Freemake Blog is the place where we, Freemake team, share our findings of new and interesting apps, software and websites across the Web. Here you’ll learn about latest tech trends, visit hot destinations on the Net, get acquainted with web influencers and laugh at our funny discoveries. Feel free to contact Freemake Blog team.

Unfortunately, the app fails here.

4. The fourth one is said in Scottish English:

Dinnae fuss, Gonninae dae that!

Which means “Don’t worry, I’m not going to do that”. And it was a complete fail. So as it is impossible in the general mode, for dialects recognition create a profile and modify Accent.

Well, if you live in Scotland, try to speak general English when you use Dragon Dictation app.

5. And the last one is a French phrase we decided to try a different language.

“J’ai le mal de la Seine” – I adore river the Seine.

Dragon Speech Recognition Software

This time the app showed a nice result again.

Dragon Tips and Tricks for Advanced Users

Using Dragon app for a long time but your text leaves much to be desired? Try these tips and tricks to improve the quality of your speech recognition:

  • Don’t dictate if the background is noisy.
  • Position the microphone near your mouth.
  • Try to use the same volume, pace and tone every time you dictate.
  • If you want to use punctuation, say the items’ names like comma or full stop.

While dictating, you are welcome to use the following voice commands:

Give me help, Set for Arial (or any other font), Bold that, Delete previous character/5 words, Spell, Select “Twinkle” (or any other word), New line/paragraph, Undo that, etc.

To see the complete list of commands, ask the Dragon app: “What can I say?”.

The Good:

  • Dragon App is free for smartphones where you most need it.
  • It is really fast at typing your words.
  • Your text can be easily shared on social networks.
  • Can be used on the go.
  • The interface is stylish and user-friendly, so you don’t need to be a software pro to use it.
  • The app is very useful for students as they can easily epitomize their lectures.
  • It is as well helpful for language learning as you can obtain a right pronunciation using it.

The Bad:

  • No note storage.
  • You need a reliable Internet connection for dictating.
  • If you use 3G or 4G, it might lead to expensive network charges.
  • There is no button to erase all the dictated text so you have to delete it with the keyboard, which is not so convenient.
  • The result isn’t always precise.
  • The proper pronouns are mostly not correct.

Verdict:

As you see the Dragon Dictation App is the most suitable for short and prepared phrases. Nonetheless, it is a great app to write your ideas down hands-free.

Dragon Desktop Options

Apart from numerous iPhone and Android apps, Nuance Communications also develop software for computers. Dragon Software in its turn is not free. There are four options for Windows users:

  • Dragon Home for $74.99 is great for bloggers and students for dictating lectures, blog posts and varies to-do’s.
  • Dragon Premium for $174.99 has more options than Dragon Home. For example, it lets you dictate via Bluetooth set. Dragon Premium is perfect for capturing documents, surf the Net, send emails, etc.
  • Dragon Professional Individual for $300 gives powerful customization features and is a must-have for working with business documents.
  • Dragon legal Individual for $500 includes a specialized legal vocabulary and lets you work with contracts, briefs and other docs just by using your voice.

Those who prefer to use Mac can benefit from two options:

  • Dragon for Mac for $300 that is fully customizable and can work with presentations, emails, spreadsheets and, of course, documents.
  • Dragon for Mac medical starting form $999 lets capture or improve clinical documentation fast and easily.

Check how it works on Mac:

Dragon Dictation’s working principles are similar to those of Siri, Google or Cortana, it recognizes speech and then converts it into words. It is really easy to use and can amaze you with a quick and precise result.

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Remember MacSpeech Dictate and Dragon Dictate? Once they were the methods you had to use for dictation on your Mac. Now it’s something you can do with an Apple desktop or laptop right out of the box.

But first a little history. MacSpeech Dictate was a speech recognition program developed for Mac OS X (which is now, of course, simply macOS). The first version of MacSpeech Dictate was released in March 2008 after being showcased at the Macworld Conference & Expo (anyone remember those?) in 2008 and winning the Macworld 2008 Best Of Show award.

On September 20, 2010, Nuance Communications, which acquired MacSpeech in February 2010, released a new version of the product, renaming it “Dragon Dictate for Mac.”

Mac support for the product was dropped in October 2018 several years after Apple added “built-in” dictation capabilities for the platform via its own Dictation feature, which converts your spoken words into text.

Setting up Dictation

Setting up Dictation is easy. Choose Apple () menu > System Preferences, click Keyboard, then click Dictation. Turn on Dictation, then you must choose:

° Whether to use Enhanced Dictation, which lets you use dictation when you’re not connected to the Internet. More on that in a sec.

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° Your language and dialect. Some languages, such as English, have multiple dialects such as my Southern accent.

° The keyboard shortcut you want to use to start start dictating.

° The microphone you wish to use; your choices will be shown from the pop-up menu below the microphone icon.

There’s also another, faster way. In macOS Sierra and higher, you can ask Siri to “turn on Dictation” for you. Don’t be confused. Siri isn’t the same as Dictation, but you can ask the personal digital assistant to compose short messages, such as email and text messages.

When you turn on Dictation, you can use your voice to enter text on your Mac. You can also use dictation commands to tell your Mac what to do, like ”undo that” or ”select the previous sentence.”

Most dictation commands turn on automatically when you turn on Enhanced Dictation. Turn on Dictation, then select “Use Enhanced Dictation.” You can now get a list of commands and select the ones that you want to use. There’s also another method:

A list of dictation commands opens. Use the checkboxes to turn commands on or off. Click a command to see which phrases work with that command. For example, “Undo that” works with several phrases, including “Undo this” and “Scratch that.”

Select “Enable advanced commands” to get additional commands.

How to use Dictation

To make your Mac listen for Dictation commands, press the keyboard shortcut for starting dictation. The default shortcut is “Fn Fn” (press the Fn key twice). Alternatively, you can turn on the option “Enable the dictation keyword phrase,” which is next to the Dictation Commands button. You can then speak the dictation keyword phrase to let your Mac know that the next thing you say after the keyword phrase will be a dictation command.

You can then speak any of the phrases that work with a dictation command. You can even say “Show commands” to open a window that shows you all the availableDictation commands.

Now that you’re ready to dictate, open a document or text field and put the insertion point at the spot where you want to dictate text. Press “Fn Fn” or choose “Edit > Start Dictation.”

Dragon Dictation For Mac Review

You can tell if your Mac is listening if it’s showing a microphone in the left or right of the page, aligned with the insertion point. If you’ve enabled advanced dictation commands, the microphone appears in the lower-right corner of your screen, and you can drag it to another position.

Dictation For Mac

Say the words that you want your Mac to type. The more you use the feature, the more it learns the characteristics of your voice and the better it works.

When you’re finished dictating, click “Done” below the microphone icon, press Fn once, or switch to another window.

Create your own commands

Dragon Naturallyspeaking For Mac

Once you become comfortable using Dictation, you may wish to create your own commands. Select “Enable advanced commands,” and a “+” Add button appears beneath the list of commands. Click it to add an “undefined command” to the list of commands.

Click the undefined command to select it, then configure these options:

° When I say: Enter the word or phrase that you want to speak to perform the action.

° While using: Choose whether your Mac performs the action only when you’re using a particular app.

° Perform: Choose the action to perform. You can open a Finder item, open a URL, paste text, paste data from the clipboard, press a keyboard shortcut, select a menu item, or run an Automator workflow.

There you go. Now you’re a regular Dictate-or on your Mac.

Dragon Naturallyspeaking For Mac Free Download

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