It would be one thing if the other options for Mac users could match Nuance's now-discontinued offering. Which leads us to the next part of the story. In other words, the clock is ticking for anyone who relies on Dragon for Mac to either find a new app or migrate to Windows.
Customers’ statutory rights are not affected."
#DRAGON DICTATION MAC SOFTWARE#
"Customers may still receive telephone support for up to 90 days from date of activating the software in North America and up to 180 days from date of software activation in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific regions.
After much consideration, we have made the difficult decision to discontinue the Dragon Professional Individual for Mac line-up," the statement reads. While some of them translated voice to text well enough, they all charge by the word or page and require minutes (or hours) to complete translation.Įvery speech recognition program I’ve ever used worked better and was more accurate when I used almost any decent third-party microphone or wired headset."Nuance is constantly evaluating its product portfolio to see how we can best meet the needs of our customers and business. Transcriptionįor what it’s worth, I also looked at a few transcription apps and services, which convert recordings of your voice into text for a fee. I haven’t used it much but it seems to work. But… you’ll only be able to select it if you are using Google’s Chrome web browser, since it isn’t available in Safari. You’ll find the second free option in Google Docs, where you can select Voice Typing from the Tools menu to dictate rather than type. This will let you perform myriad actions with your voice including selecting text moving the cursor to the beginning or end of a selection, sentence, paragraph, or document formatting text scrolling, and more. macOS Dictation is not as accurate or powerful as Dragon (Mac or Windows), but it’s a hell of a lot better than nothing.Ĭlick Enable Advanced Commands to get voice control options like these. In the Accessibility System Preferences pane’s Dictation tab, click the Dictation Commands button and then click Enable Advanced Commands.If you don’t, you’ll be unable to use Dictation without an Internet connection.Ĭhoose Use Enhanced Dictation to dictate without an Internet connection. Check the Use Enhanced Dictation checkbox on the Keyboard System Preferences pane’s Dictation tab.I recommend two tweaks that make Dictation more useful: This lets you dictate on your Mac in any document or field that can accept text input. One of the free options is macOS Dictation, which you enable in the Keyboard System Preferences pane’s Dictation tab.
#DRAGON DICTATION MAC PRO#
The most expensive and odious option (IMHO) is the Windows version of Dragon Professional (from $300) running on your Mac under emulation like Parallels Desktop (from $63.99), VMWare Fusion Pro ($40), or Boot Camp (free with macOS).Īs odious as I find this option, it is the only one that compares to the late Dragon Professional For Mac feature-wise.
That being said, the other two options have obvious advantages: They’re both free, they both work on most modern Macs, and they’re both better than no speech recognition at all. The word “Replace” is in quotes for a reason: Only the most expensive and odious option offers the same (or better) features as the late Dragon Professional for Mac. The other two options are decent and free, but they don’t offer features like voice training or extensive customization. I have found three possible options to “replace” Dragon Professional on the Mac.