You also have voice commands, such as “scratch that,” which removes the last bits of dictated text, and “go to end of field,” which moves the cursor to the bottom of the text entry field. While you can only dictate inside the Dragon Anywhere app, it’s easy to get your text out, even via voice command. When corrections are necessary in Dragon Anywhere, you can use your voice to select words or groups of words and dictate over the top of them without touching the keyboard. It gets noticeably more words right, and there are fewer corrections required. In addition, Dragon Anywhere generally does a better job than Siri dictation. If you are using Dragon Dictation on your Mac, the custom words will synchronize with that as well. Your custom words will synchronize across all installations of the application, including those on your iPad and iPhone. I added Camera+ to the Dragon Anywhere dictionary but also listed the app’s spoken form as “camera plus.” Now Dragon Anywhere gets the word right every time. For instance, I was writing about the iPhone camera app “Carmera+” and wanted to be able to dictate the app’s name. The application allows you to add new words in both the written and spoken forms. You can add words right in the application.

I’ve used Dragon Anywhere for long dictation sessions and written multipage documents without any of the trouble I get from Siri dictation’s timer.ĭragon Anywhere is particularly great on iPads that support Slide Over and Split View.ĭragon Anywhere also has a customizable user-defined dictionary. Dragon Anywhere will turn off the microphone if you are silent for 20 seconds-which I think is too short of a delay-but as long as you’re talking, it keeps transcribing. Just press the app’s big green button and start dictating without worrying about it quitting midsentence.

With Dragon Anywhere, you can dictate for long stretches of time without getting shut down. Once you subscribe, you can log in with the free application and dictate away.ĭragon Anywhere solves both of the above-mentioned Siri dictation shortcomings. The subscription starts at $15 a month and goes down slightly if you pay quarterly or yearly. Nuance Communications, makers of Dragon Dictation and other dictation software, have attempted to solve these problems on the iPhone and iPad with the subscription-based Dragon Anywhere.ĭragon Anywhere is multiplatform mobile dictation software for iOS and Android. For power dictators, these limitations in Siri dictation can be maddening. In the past I have solved this problem by substituting simple words such as monkey and banana in place of those words I know Siri dictation cannot recognize, and I go back later to do a search and replace. Beyond adding contacts, there’s no mechanism for you to add words to the Siri dictation dictionary, and as you are dictating, you have to constantly be aware of those words that will give it fits. However, when you start adding proper names or industry jargon, it falls apart. Siri dictation can handle just about any word you will find in a standard dictionary. You can add custom words like industry jargon or proper nouns, and let Dragon know how you’ll be pronouncing them.Īnother problem is the limited vocabulary. Going back and fixing these issues later takes time, and that constant knowledge that your dictation will stop at any moment is a huge distraction. Sadly, that often happens when you are midsentence, and pressing the button again leads to grammatical hijinks. As soon as you press that microphone button on your device, the fuse is lit, and at some point Siri dictation will just stop. My informal timing of Siri dictation shows that it shuts down at around 40 seconds. Siri dictation only works long enough for you to dictate three or four sentences. Nevertheless, there remain some issues with Siri dictation that have yet to be solved. As Apple has improved its voice-dictation software and back-end servers, Siri is now better than it ever has been at turning your spoken words into text on your screen. Users should have the option of dictating into their mobile devices, and Apple has made a lot of strides over the last few years with Siri dictation. The touch keyboards on our iPhones and iPads are great, but we’re still trying to type on glass.

Dragon dictate for mac problems