OS X Mavericks: The Missing Manual

Dictation

Believe it or not, dictation is built into the Mac, just as it is on the latest iPhones and iPads. You can speak to type.

In fact, OS X’s dictation feature is almost identical to the iPhone/iPad’s. It lets you speak to enter text anywhere, into any program, just by speaking. (Behind the scenes, it’s using the same Nuance recognition technology that powers Dragon Dictate.) You can blather away into an email, fire off a text message, or draft a memo without ever looking at the screen.

GEM IN THE ROUGH: The Least-Known Typing Feature

This may come as a shock if you think you know your Mac pretty well, but here goes: OS X actually offers system-wide autocomplete of big words, just like the iPhone.

We’re not talking about the spelling checker, and we’re not talking about text substitution. We’re talking, you start typing a word and the Mac finishes it for you. It’s ideal when you’re in a hurry, when you’re not sure how to finish a word (is it independance or independence?), or when you’re trying to solve a crossword puzzle. It works in all the standard Mac programs (TextEdit, Mail, Safari, Pages, and so on).

Once you’ve begun typing a word, press either F5 or Option-Esc to produce the list of possible word completions shown here. If the Mac correctly anticipates the rest of the word, great; press Tab, Return, or the space bar to accept the suggestion, and then keep right on typing. ...