I am a huge fan of dictating requests to my Apple devices. For some reason, many times when I suggest to other people that they try it, they say, \u201cI don\u2019t like to talk to my devices.\u201d I think if you\u2019re around people all the time that certainly makes sense because you don\u2019t want to bother them and you don\u2019t want to look like you could use some mental health services.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve been holding back, perhaps what I have to say will convince you to give it a whirl. I’m wild about dictation and I have figured out a couple of tiny tips that might make it more useful for you.<\/p>\n
Probably the thing I dictate most often is Reminders. If I\u2019m driving or running or walking, I don\u2019t want to mess with my phone. It\u2019s obviously dangerous when driving but for me, even walking is life-threatening. Remind me to tell you sometime about the time I hit my head on the sidewalk simply walking Tesla and how I had her vet test me to see if I had a concussion. And that day I wasn\u2019t even playing with my phone!<\/p>\n
I listen to a lot of podcasts (not a lot compared to Jill from the North Woods, but still a lot) and I\u2019ll often hear about something interesting I want to check out later. In my case I’m normally wearing AirPods, so without needing to pause the podcast, I\u2019ll say, \u201cHey S-Lady, remind me to look for that iPhone case Dave Hamilton mentioned on the Mac Geek Gab.\u201d<\/p>\n
Obviously, something like this isn\u2019t a critical action item, so it\u2019s not worth stopping and pecking out a reminder to myself on the tiny iPhone screen. Often when I get back from a run I can have a half-dozen reminders waiting for me. I don\u2019t necessarily do<\/em> these things when I get back but at least I\u2019ll be reminded that at some point I thought it was interesting enough to set up a reminder.<\/p>\n If I really do need to execute one of my reminders, I\u2019ll add a time to the end. I\u2019ll say, \u201cRemind me to write to Karl at 10:30 am today.\u201d The precise time isn\u2019t always important, but I usually pick a time when I’m sure I\u2019ll be back home. This will tickle me to do it instead of waiting for me to open up Reminders to see what I thought was important on my run.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a little tip about timed reminders.<\/p>\n The other day I inadvertently said, \u201cRemind me at 10 am\u201d instead of 10:30. I wasn\u2019t sure I’d be back home in time for that reminder. Sometimes when I mess up like this I\u2019ll just dictate a second reminder, but this week I discovered that you can actually have S-Lady adjust the time. Right after saying \u201cRemind me at 10 am\u201d, I said, \u201cChange the time on that last reminder to 10:30 am\u201d and it worked! I was pretty stoked about that.<\/p>\n One problem to be solved in dictating to your phone is when you forget what you need to say partway through. If you pause for any length of time at all, your voice assistant will assume that you\u2019re finished and execute whatever partial information you gave. Wouldn\u2019t it be great if you had a way to get a moment to gather your thoughts without the voice assistant assuming you\u2019re finished?<\/p>\n Here\u2019s my trick. Just drag out the last word you\u2019re saying before you get stuck. Let\u2019s take my example of setting a reminder to call Karl. I’m notoriously bad at names, which means there\u2019s a better than 50\/50 chance that by the time I get to the name I\u2019ll need a moment. If I say, \u201cRemind me to write to…\u201d and pause, S-Lady will give me a reminder that simply says \u201cWrite to\u201d.<\/p>\n Instead, I\u2019ll say \u201cRemind me to write tooooooooooo Karl!\u201d I can hold that last syllable till Karl\u2019s name comes into my head. I’m sure I sound like an idiot to anyone walking by but at least I get a correctly transcribed reminder when I get home. When I remember to use this little trick, it works every time.<\/p>\n I also use Siri to dictate messages to people when I’m walking or running. Steven Goetz and I enjoy chatting about things the Accidental Tech Podcast hosts say, and there\u2019s no way I can remember when I get home to tell him something about the show I’m listening to while running.<\/p>\n If you want to send to someone on Apple Messages, you can simply say, \u201cSend a message to Dave Hamilton\u201d and then when she\u2019s ready, dictate your message. I’m not a big iMessage user and instead, Telegram is my messaging service of choice. Luckily it\u2019s quite simple to send to Telegram instead. I simply say, \u201cSend a Telegram to Steven Goetz.\u201d I haven\u2019t tested it but I imagine that would work with Signal or other messaging services.<\/p>\n For the most part, dictation of my little messages through AirPods works remarkably well. Most people receiving dictated messages to will figure out pretty quickly that you\u2019re dictating because of the occasional typo, and especially if a very similar-sounding word is inserted in place of what you meant. People don\u2019t seem to mind these little typos.<\/p>\n But what do you do if S-Lady misinterprets what you say and the entire point of the message gets borked as a result? After you complete the dictation, she\u2019ll read it back and say, \u201cready to send it?\u201d Obviously, the answer back is \u201cno\u201d, but she doesn\u2019t destroy the message when you say \u201cno\u201d. Instead, she says, \u201cOk, let me know when you\u2019re ready to send it.\u201d But what if you don\u2019t ever<\/em> want to send it? With that message glued to her sticky little fingers, you don\u2019t have the option to dictate a new message.<\/p>\n For the last few years, I’ve tried all kinds of phrases to try to get her to abandon the message so I can dictate the correct message. I’ve tried \u201cDelete\u201d, \u201cThrow it away\u201d, \u201cStop\u201d, \u201cNever Send\u201d, and nothing worked to make her let go of the borked message. I always just wait her out until she gets bored and drops my message somewhere random and then I can ask her again to send a Telegram to Steven Goetz about how annoying Marco is when he’s insulting all Californians.<\/p>\n I finally found the keyword she needs to hear to get her to abandon a message. It\u2019s to simply say, \u201cErase.\u201d I’m am incredibly happy that I can finally get her to let me dictate a new message while I still have a chance of remembering what I have to say.<\/p>\n My last and final tip on dictating messages and reminders is to speak very quickly. I hear some people sounding the words out super carefully, and that seems to be less successful for me than rapid and natural speech.<\/p>\n My theory, based on only my anecdotal observations, is that S-Lady needs the context around what you\u2019re saying in order to figure out the words and if you go too slowly she doesn\u2019t have that context. If you watch the dictation real-time, you\u2019ll often see an incorrect word typed and after enough context is added, it will sort itself out.<\/p>\n Maybe you still won\u2019t dictate into your devices after hearing my tips, but hopefully, if and when you do dictate, these tiny tips will help you enjoy the experience more often.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am a huge fan of dictating requests to my Apple devices. For some reason, many times when I suggest to other people that they try it, they say, \u201cI don\u2019t like to talk to my devices.\u201d I think if you\u2019re around people all the time that certainly makes sense because you don\u2019t want to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[1832,4815,4819,1008,1100,2594],"class_list":["post-24527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-posts","tag-dictation","tag-ios-15","tag-ios-dictations","tag-messages","tag-reminders","tag-telegram"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/dictation-symbol.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24527"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24556,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24527\/revisions\/24556"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Reminders at specific times<\/h2>\n
What if you forget what you meant to say partway through?<\/h2>\n
Sending messages to people<\/h2>\n
Speak Quickly<\/h2>\n
Bottom Line<\/h2>\n