With macOS Catalina, Apple introduced the “Voice Control” feature to provide a better way to control the Mac by voice. And after giving my MacBook a shot what I can say is it works pretty well. Sometimes I even find it more convenient to interact with the macOS device using voice commands rather than traditional input methods. Siri’s speech recognition engine, combined with its ability to recognize various apps, tags, and controls, played a vital role in making the dictation feature effective. While macOS offers many ready-made commands, you can choose to create custom Voice Control commands on your Mac for a personalized experience. That’s exactly what I’m going to show you in this hands-on guide!
Custom Voice Commands and Word Creation on Mac
In addition to fine-tuning custom commands, you can also create your own dictation dictionary. If you want advanced control, be sure to build your own vocabulary. That aside, there are a few things to keep in mind beforehand:
- First of all, as of now, Voice Control uses the Siri speech recognition engine for US English only. Other languages use the speech recognition engine that was previously available with the Advanced Dictation feature.
- If you are using a proxy server on your Mac, you may need to disable it as Voice Control may not download to your device.
Now that everything seems clear, let’s get started with the steps!
Enable Voice Control on macOS
You can quickly turn on voice control on your Mac by simply activating Siri and asking it to do the work for you. You can also do it from System Preferences.
1. click apple menu top right -> System Preferences -> Accessibility.
2. Now, click volume control in the sidebar. After that, be sure to tick the box. “Enable Voice Control”.
Next up, you’ll have to wait a minute or two to let macOS download Voice Control to your Mac. When Voice Control is turned on, a microphone will appear on the screen.
- According to your needs, you can choose your preferred language for voice control. To add a language, click the drop-down menu next to it. Tongue and then click on Add Language. Later on, choose your preferred language. If you want to remove it, select . Customize and deselect language. After that, click on OK.
- There is also an option to change the microphone. To do this, click on Microphone drop-down menu and then select the preferred option.
- Play a sound when a command is detected: Make sure to check this box if you want your Mac to play a sound to confirm that it recognizes a particular command.
If you want to pause Voice Control and stop it from listening, simply say “Go to sleep” or simply click Sleep. Say or click “Wake up” to continue Voice Control.
Customize Voice Control Commands on macOS
- Start System Preferences -> Accessibility.
2. Make sure that: volume control selected in the sidebar. Now, click commands.
3. Next, you should see several predefined voice control commands. The standard commands are grouped into several categories such as Overlays and Mouse, Basic Navigation, Text Editing, Text Deletion, Dictation, Text Selection, and Text Navigation.
Tick the ones you want to use and uncheck the ones you don’t need. Also, select preferred ones to check additional phrases for them. To add a new command, click on it. “+”.
5. Up next, you have three options:
- When I say: Type the phrase/word to initiate a specific action.
- When using: Choose a preferred app.
- role play: Select the desired action.
Finally, make sure you click Completed to approve. All custom commands appear at the top of the Command list.
Going forward, you can use these Voice Control commands to navigate or interact with your Mac. If you decide to delete a command you created earlier, return to the Voice Control preference and Select the command in the custom section. After that, click on To pick up button
Customize Voice Control Dictionary
- Start System Preferences -> Accessibility.
2. make sure volume control option is selected in the sidebar. Then click on word option.
3. Next, click on “+” Press to add a sentence/word. After that, click on save to finish.
Fine-tune Voice Control Commands on Mac
So you can create custom Voice Control commands in macOS to more conveniently control your device with voice. These commands can come in handy in many situations when you want to make interacting with your computer a little more convenient. Along with this notable feature, macOS Catalina also came with a few new features like Screen Time, a full-fledged Apple Music app, and Approved to allow Apple Watch users to unlock the Mac with ease. What is your favorite new feature and why? Don’t forget to spill some beans about it in the comments below.