A Sound is worth thousand actions : Using Mac’s Speech to Action Feature

Mac OS X has many features, and most of them are hidden and they won’t reveal until you search for them.

Today, when i was just changing my Wallpaper on my Computer, i just clicked on Speech in the System Preferences. Well, then what i found was the Text to Speech stuff, which in Windows is known as Windows Narrator.

Well and Good that Mac has it. But then i saw another feature, called Speech Recognition. I clicked on it. All i saw was Speakable Items Written on Top with options, to Click on or off. Following my age old habit, i clicked on and waited to see what happened.

Some Small Circle like thing popped up with a Microphone drawn on it, and it had something written over there, “Esc”. So, i just pressed “Esc” and the Mic Started Receiving Voice. Good. I started singing….

But then, i though what is it exactly? And i don’t know what happened or was it a co-incidence, i said “Apple” and at that time i was Watching some YouTube Video. A new tab opened with Apple.com!

Well, that was just the starting. I went back to the settings, and dug in, like i always do and found out many, many commands which could be used do save time, and just do simple tasks.

When keeping “Esc” pressed (or any other key which you can assign in the Speech Settings), i just spoke “What time is It?” and then i heard some voice repeating my question with the answer.

And if that’s not enough, you could assign your own names too, for example i landed on hop.im (My Url shortening service) and i just said “Make This Page Speakable” and then some Box Popped out asking me to type in something which could be said by me everytime i want to open the page. I named it Hop. So, now every time i say “Hop” it opens hop.im in my broswer. Same With Twitter, Google and Apple (Ofcourse) and many more.

Just a Tip : Using a External Microphone is suggested because the internal one’s are located at odd places, and in order to record it clearly you need to take lots of pains, so a external would rock. Also, there have been lots of problems i have been facing with this because of some Accent problems, Our (Indian) English is way different from those of the Americans.