(Insider info: This widget was modeled after the badges worn in the original Star Trek series.)Ĭlick the check boxes for those areas you will find the most useful for speech recognition. Next, click the Speech Recognition tab, then the Commands Tab, and finally click the On radio button for Speakable Items.Īs soon as you click the radio button next to Speakable Items this Widget will appear on your desktop. You can find it by choosing Apple Menu > System Preferences > Speech. Start with the Speech Recognition Panel to turn on the Speakable Items option. You just have to go through this process once and it is worth it. The first thing you have to do to activate your Mac's speech capabilities is to set up the preferences.

Tom worked for Apple at one time and helped write the code for the speech functions so he knows a lot about it and I greatly appreciate him taking the time to pass on all his knowledge. Reader Tom Bonura wrote not long ago and told me about all the cool things you can ask your Mac to do for you with verbal commands. You can ask it to look up phone numbers from your Address Book, or insert text into a document upon command. What kind of things? Well, you can make it open and close applications, or send documents, text from a Web page, an image, or a mail message you want to forward. You can make it talk to you, which you may already know, but you can talk to it and make it do all kinds of cool things for you with its built-in support for speech recognition. What? What? What is she talking about? My Mac of course.

Mac voice recognition