Voice Control uses the Siri speech-recognition engine to improve on the Enhanced Dictation feature available in earlier versions of macOS. MacOS Catalina introduces Voice Control, a new way to fully control your Mac entirely with your voice.

Not all languages are supported by offline dictation.

Caps on/caps off: capitalize the first character of each word.

Here are some common punctuation and formatting commands that you can use: For example, 'Hello John comma the check is in the mail exclamation mark' becomes 'Hello John, the check is in the mail!' You can add punctuation by saying what you want. To change the language that dictation uses, long press the microphone button, then select the language you want to use. To add more text, tap where you want to add new text, tap the microphone button, then speak again. To replace a section, select what you want to replace, then tap the microphone button and speak again. To replace a word, double-tap it, tap the microphone button, then say it again, and tap the keyboard button. To make corrections, tap the underlined word, then select the correct spelling. If dictation isn’t sure what word it heard, you'll see a blue line under the transcribed word so you can check it for accuracy. To finish, stop speaking, then tap the keyboard button. As you speak, the text appears on the screen. To enter text, tap the microphone button on your keyboard, then start speaking. Earlier models of iPhone and iPad require an Internet connection. On iPhone 6s or later, and iPad, you can use dictation without being connected to the Internet. If you’ve set up Enhanced Dictation, they’ll appear immediately. Speak to your Mac and the words you speak will start appearing in the text field. Next, press the Fn (Function) key twice or click the Edit menu and select Start Dictation. To use voice dictation in an application on your Mac, first select a text field in an application.

You can add the Speak command to your Quick Access Toolbar by doing the following in Word, Outlook, PowerPoint.

To learn how to configure Excel for text-to-speech, see Converting text to speech in Excel. To use text-to-speech in different languages, see Using the Speak feature with Multilingual TTS. When you turn on Voice Control for the first time, your Mac completes a one-time download from Apple. Choose Apple menu System Preferences, then click Accessibility.

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