macOS Catalina introduces Voice Control, a new way to fully control your Mac entirely with your voice. Voice Control uses the Siri speech-recognition engine to improve on the Enhanced Dictation feature available in earlier versions of macOS.1
How to turn on Voice Control
After upgrading to macOS Catalina, follow these steps to turn on Voice Control:
- Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Accessibility.
- Click Voice Control in the sidebar.
- Select Enable Voice Control. When you turn on Voice Control for the first time, your Mac completes a one-time download from Apple.2
Voice Control preferences
When Voice Control is enabled, you see an onscreen microphone representing the mic selected in Voice Control preferences.
Curse voice free download - Din's Curse, MorphVOX Mac Voice Changer, Skype, and many more programs. Alternatives to Curse Client for Windows, Mac, Linux, Web, iPhone and more. Filter by license to discover only free or Open Source alternatives. This list contains a total of 5 apps similar to Curse Client. List updated: 2:46:00 AM.
To pause Voice Control and stop it from from listening, say ”Go to sleep” or click Sleep. To resume Voice Control, say or click ”Wake up.”
How to use Voice Control
Get to know Voice Control by reviewing the list of voice commands available to you: Say “Show commands” or ”Show me what I can say.” The list varies based on context, and you may discover variations not listed. To make it easier to know whether Voice Control heard your phrase as a command, you can select ”Play sound when command is recognized” in Voice Control preferences.
Basic navigation
Voice Control recognizes the names of many apps, labels, controls, and other onscreen items, so you can navigate by combining those names with certain commands. Here are some examples:
- Open Pages: ”Open Pages.” Then create a new document: ”Click New Document.” Then choose one of the letter templates: 'Click Letter. Click Classic Letter.” Then save your document: ”Save document.”
- Start a new message in Mail: ”Click New Message.” Then address it: ”John Appleseed.”
- Turn on Dark Mode: ”Open System Preferences. Click General. Click Dark.” Then quit System Preferences: ”Quit System Preferences” or ”Close window.”
- Restart your Mac: ”Click Apple menu. Click Restart” (or use the number overlay and say ”Click 8”).
You can also create your own voice commands.
Number overlays
Use number overlays to quickly interact with parts of the screen that Voice Control recognizes as clickable, such as menus, checkboxes, and buttons. To turn on number overlays, say ”Show numbers.” Then just say a number to click it.
Number overlays make it easy to interact with complex interfaces, such as web pages. For example, in your web browser you could say ”Search for Apple stores near me.” Then use the number overlay to choose one of the results: ”Show numbers. Click 64.” (If the name of the link is unique, you might also be able to click it without overlays by saying ”Click” and the name of the link.)
Voice Control automatically shows numbers in menus and wherever you need to distinguish between items that have the same name.
Grid overlays
Use grid overlays to interact with parts of the screen that don't have a control, or that Voice Control doesn't recognize as clickable.
Say “Show grid” to show a numbered grid on your screen, or ”Show window grid” to limit the grid to the active window. Say a grid number to subdivide that area of the grid, and repeat as needed to continue refining your selection.
To click the item behind a grid number, say ”Click” and the number. Or say ”Zoom” and the number to zoom in on that area of the grid, then automatically hide the grid. You can also use grid numbers to drag a selected item from one area of the grid to another: ”Drag 3 to 14.”
To hide grid numbers, say ”Hide numbers.” To hide both numbers and grid, say ”Hide grid.”
Dictation
When the cursor is in a document, email message, text message, or other text field, you can dictate continuously. Dictation converts your spoken words into text.
- To enter a punctuation mark, symbol, or emoji, just speak its name, such as ”question mark” or ”percent sign” or ”happy emoji.” These may vary by language or dialect.
- To move around and select text, you can use commands like ”Move up two sentences” or ”Move forward one paragraph” or ”Select previous word” or ”Select next paragraph.”
- To format text, try ”Bold that” or ”Capitalize that,” for example. Say ”numeral” to format your next phrase as a number.
- To delete text, you can choose from many delete commands. For example, say “delete that” and Voice Control knows to delete what you just typed. Or say ”Delete all” to delete everything and start over.
Voice Control understands contextual cues, so you can seamlessly transition between text dictation and commands. For example, to dictate and then send a birthday greeting in Messages, you could say ”Happy Birthday. Click Send.” Or to replace a phrase, say ”Replace I’m almost there with I just arrived.”
You can also create your own vocabulary for use with dictation.
Create your own voice commands and vocabulary
Create your own voice commands
- Open Voice Control preferences, such as by saying ”Open Voice Control preferences.”
- Click Commands or say ”Click Commands.” The complete list of all commands opens.
- To add a new command, click the add button (+) or say ”Click add.” Then configure these options to define the command:
- When I say: Enter the word or phrase that you want to be able to speak to perform the action.
- While using: Choose whether your Mac performs the action only when you're using a particular app.
- Perform: Choose the action to perform. You can open a Finder item, open a URL, paste text, paste data from the clipboard, press a keyboard shortcut, select a menu item, or run an Automator workflow.
- Use the checkboxes to turn commands on or off. You can also select a command to find out whether other phrases work with that command. For example, “Undo that” works with several phrases, including “Undo this” and “Scratch that.”
To quickly add a new command, you can say ”Make this speakable.” Voice Control will help you configure the new command based on the context. For example, if you speak this command while a menu item is selected, Voice Control helps you make a command for choosing that menu item.
Create your own dictation vocabulary
- Open Voice Control preferences, such as by saying ”Open Voice Control preferences.”
- Click Vocabulary, or say ”Click Vocabulary.”
- Click the add button (+) or say ”Click add.”
- Type a new word or phrase as you want it to be entered when spoken.
Learn more
- For the best performance when using Voice Control with a Mac notebook computer and an external display, keep your notebook lid open or use an external microphone.
- All audio processing for Voice Control happens on your device, so your personal data is always kept private.
- Use Voice Control on your iPhone or iPod touch.
- Learn more about accessibility features in Apple products.
1. Voice Control uses the Siri speech-recognition engine for U.S. English only. Other languages and dialects use the speech-recognition engine previously available with Enhanced Dictation.
2. If you're on a business or school network that uses a proxy server, Voice Control might not be able to download. Have your network administrator refer to the network ports used by Apple software products.
Curse hopes 10 million of you will get chatty in 2015.
Its free voice and instant messaging chat application for gamers, Curse Voice, reached more than 2.5 million installs and more than 1 million active users in December after a six-month beta test. And the company plans for even more ambitious expansion next year.
The hugely popular gaming media company’s sites see more than 50 million visitors each month. Curse is a privately held company based in Huntsville, Ala., and counts LoLNexus, Gamepedia, Arena Junkies, the Minecraft Forum and Wiki, and MMO-Champion among its 45 sites. Its first standalone program to help gamers access and organize mod downloads for World of Warcraft released seven years ago, and it launched into the voice and instant message chat business with Curse Voice starting in a June beta test.
I spoke with Michael Comperda, Curse’s chief technology officer. He says he expects Curse Voice to reach more than 10 million users by the end of 2015 and that the company has an ambitious schedule of new platform releases planned for the first quarter.
“There’s a great deal of opportunity there,” he said. “Nothing is easy, but it’s going to be a natural progression.”
Several competitors stand in the way. Comperda was dismissive of other platforms — “These products haven’t innovated much at all for a decade” — but even in Curse’s core market of World of Warcraft and League of Legends users, the dominant voice chat systems have loyal followings. Mumble, TeamSpeak, Skype, RaidCall, and Ventrilo, among others, command audiences of tens of millions of players and are also free to use, though players who host servers may pay fees (Curse is free, whether you host chat sessions or just participate).
Curse is introducing a number of new features in the next few months that Comperda expects will drive traffic, including:
- Friend Sync, available now, which pulls in friends lists (with the gamer’s permission) from Skype, Steam, League of Legends, and Battle.net and automatically adds them to Curse Voice friends lists when they sign up for the service. Support for Smite is in the works, Comperda said.
- A guild and clan system, available for public testing in January or February and launching by second quarter 2015. It’ll allow players to set up guild and clan sessions and hubs, bounce around to the different groups they may belong to across different games, and keep track of friends. The company hopes it’ll become a social hub for guild and clan play.
- A mobile version, coming to iOS in February and Android in March, to be available on the iOS App Store and Google Play.
- A Mac version, available for beta testing in March.
Singing App
All versions use the Opus codec, an open-source audio format that has tested well in frequency response and after compression.
Gallery: Curse Voice
Above: The Curse Voice friends menu pulls in your buddies from other services.
Image Credit: CurseCurse has invested in heavily in cloud computing for the service, enabling it to spin up servers quickly in times of high demand, Comperda said. But it was disappointed in some of the latency users saw during the beta test. Recently, the company transitioned the Voice servers to the Aerospike NoSQL Database system to help resolve those issues and keep up with the demand. The switch enables Curse to support gamers chatting in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia, and it has been an order of magnitude faster, he said.
“People hate when things are slow,” he said wryly, adding that the company intends Curse Voice to continue attracting users with more features than just speed. “We’ve done a lot of market research. Every person at Curse is a gamer in some way.”
Curse investors include GGV, Ventech, Idinvest, YY, and Softtech VC. The company announced in July that it raised $16 million in a Series B funding round, and it previously raised $6 million in 2009.
Curse sites are funded with a combination of advertising and subscriptions; the company has said that advertising will not be part of Curse Voice. Instead, the app will be combined with the existing Curse clients to create a single ad- and subscription-free service early in 2015. Curse clients currently have about 7 million active users.