Most people likely already know and use the voice dictation feature in iOS and macOS all day, but I’ve only now seen the light.
Yesterday, I discovered I could dictate text notes to my iPhone, even offline. It works with Obsidian, WhatsApp, and any other app where I need to enter text, like the Safari search box. I suck at entering text on the phone. I also hate WhatsApp audio messages, but I often recur to them as, again, I suck at typing text on the phone. I can instead dictate those messages, and they will render as text as if I typed them; what a revelation!
It’s not entirely a discovery; I knew I could do that and did it occasionally, primarily for quick lookups. However, I underestimated how good and valuable the feature is.
This morning, I discovered the obvious: I can do the same on the Mac. The MacBook keyboard has a microphone function key, and guess what? It’s for voice dictation, and it works seamlessly. I can even start typing on the keyboard, switch to dictation on the fly, and then go back to typing without interruption. It works offline and has built-in multi-language support, just like iOS. Voice dictation will likely change how I take notes, send messages, and perform other tasks. Take notes, for example; until today, I rarely write them down when away from the keyboard.