How to Use Dictation to Write What You Say on a Mac

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There are many reasons you might want to avoid typing on your Mac. Perhaps your arms are tired, or you have an injury or you just would rather dictate your text. MacOS comes with built-in dictation so you can fill in forms quickly by just speaking what you want to type.

1. Select Keyboard from the System Preferences menu.

2. Under Dictation, switch Dictation to “On.”

3. If you want Enhanced Dictation, click “Use Enhanced Dictation” in the menu that appears. This will allow you to use dictation when the Mac is offline and does not send your speech to Apple to be parsed.

4.  Double-tap the Function (fn) button and begin saying what you want to type when you are in a form field you wish to fill out.

You can also use dictation in writing apps like Word. Double-tap the Function button whenever you want to activate it.

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Jennifer Kyrnin
Jennifer Kyrnin
Jennifer Kyrnin has been building websites since 1995, and teaching others how to do it since 1997. She's written several books on the topic, and is probably working on another one right now. And she does it all on her beloved iMac and sometimes her MacBook Air.