How to Setting up Speech Recognition on a Macintosh Computer

The future of personal computing is the Apple Macintosh of today. Armed with speech recognition software, the Mac can listen to and understand voice commands to perform everyday tasks. Follow these simple steps to set up Speech Recognition on your Mac.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Activate speech recognition by going to "System Preferences" and selecting "Speech." Turn on the Speech Recognition tab. Then turn on Speakable Items.

2. Set the Listening Method to "Listen continuously with keyword" for hands-free use. Now, set "Keyword is optional before commands." While hands-free is the most satisfying setup, it also requires the most quiet environment. Any odd noise may set off wildly random commands.

3. Safeguard against background noise accidentally setting off commands. Set to "Listen only while key is pressed" mode, or "Keyword is required before commands" option.

4. Add to the factory set of Speakable Commands by making keyboard commands speakable. Simply say "Define keyboard command" and you'll be prompted to define a command for a single application, or globally for all applications.

Tips & Warnings

• Use speech recognition to replace repetitive keyboard, mouse, and trackpad motions, which could cause carpal tunnel syndrome injury.
• More Speakable Items can easily be added with AppleScript, which is similar to creating a Macro command.
• For greater control over speech recognition, toggle continuous listening on/off with the listening key.