What is Volume Control and How to Use it on Your Mac

On October 7, 2019, Apple released the long-awaited macOS Catalina, the sixteenth major version of the operating system and the successor to macOS Mojave. If you’ve already upgraded to macOS Catalina, you’ve probably tried out new, life-changing features that offer some convenience and some fun.

Among them is the Voice Control feature, designed for those who want to control the Mac instead of using a keyboard or mouse.

If that’s your case, or you want a new way to use your Mac without the hassle of typing or using your mouse, read on to learn what Voice Control is and what you can do with it.

What is Voice Control on Mac?

Voice Control is a macOS Catalina feature that lets you control your Mac using simple voice commands emitted by voice recognition technology.

With this feature, you can issue commands to your Mac and dictate text to documents and emails. It’s designed to help people who don’t want to use a traditional mouse or keyboard and still run their Mac computers.

Opening and closing apps or giving commands with your voice takes no time. You probably used Siri to control some basic functions of your Mac, such as adjusting the volume and changing the brightness levels, but with Voice Control, you may not need Siri for such tasks.

Voice Control leverages the on-device processing and speech recognition engine used in Siri to deliver a great experience in Catalina.

Using dictation and voice commands also offers more flexibility and is compatible with older and current versions of macOS.

How to Get Started and Use Voice Control on Your Mac

If you’re using the latest macOS Catalina on your Mac, use this introductory guide to control it using your voice.

Stage 1: Open Voice Control by clicking Menu>System>Preferences and select Accessibility.

Step 2: Click Voice Control in the sidebar.

Stage 3: Click Enable Voice Control. If this is your first time, you will get a one-time download from Apple with selected files in your language. When enabled, a floating microphone will appear on your screen, representing the microphone selected from the Voice Control preferences.

You can stop Voice Control from listening by clicking Sleep or saying “Go to sleep”. This will pause the service and when you’re ready to use it again, click or say “Wake up”.

note: When Voice Control is enabled, you will not see the keyboard dictation option.

How to Use Voice Control on Your Mac

You can use Voice Control across apps on your Mac, including email clients, dictation in word processors, messaging apps, and more.

You can click menu>System Preferences>Accessibility>Voice Control and Commands to recognize the commands you can use. Alternatively, say “Show commands” and review the list of commands available to you.

The script is context dependent, so you may not find some variations on this list. However, to find out if Voice Control can hear what you say as a command, you can go back to Voice Control preferences and select Play voice when the command is recognized.

You can also search or scroll through the default commands or create custom commands just for yourself. To do this, click the + button at the bottom left of the screen to create custom commands.

Types of Commands You Can Use with Voice Control on Your Mac

Basic navigation commands

Voice Control lets you navigate by combining the names of many apps, controls, or labels and other screen elements it recognizes with specific commands. For example, if you want to open a new document, you can say “Open Pages” and then say “Click New Document”. Say the command “Save document” to save it and it will do everything for you.

You can also use your voice to turn on Dark Mode, restart your Mac, or start and address a new message in Mail.

Number Overlays

Voice Control recognizes that parts of your Mac’s screen are clickable, such as check boxes, menus, and buttons. Using number overlays, you can quickly interact with such parts. To enable number overlays, simply say “Show Numbers” and say the number to click.

This is an easy way to interact with web pages and other complex interfaces. For example, you can say “Call Guidingtech” in a web browser and use the number overlay to select a result by saying “Show numbers”. Click 1.”

If you need to distinguish items with a similar name, Voice Control will still show numbers in such menus.

Grid Overlays

This is another feature you can use to interact with parts of your Mac’s screen that have no control or are not recognized as clickable by Voice Control. To use it, say “Show grid” to see a numbered grid and continue to refine your selection by saying the number you want.

To hide the grid numbers, simply say “Hide numbers” or “Hide grid” to completely hide the numbers and the grid.

Dictation

This feature in Voice Control converts spoken words to text so you can enter a message in a document, email or other text field and dictate continuously. You can also dictate punctuation, emojis, symbols and select, format, move and delete text using commands.

Voice Control understands contextual cues so you can seamlessly switch between commands and dictation. For example, in the Messages app, “I’m right around the corner. Click Submit.

note: Voice Control also lets you build your vocabulary for use with dictation.

Talk to Your Mac

We hope you now know what Voice Control is and how to use this great feature to enjoy an exciting hands-off experience on your Mac. Try some commands and see how easy it is to get things done without traditional input devices.

Next: Tired of going back to the main account on Netflix to find titles to play? You can now use Google Assistant to play content from your Netflix profile. Find out how in our next piece.