Using Mac dictation and Slack's voice notes for added efficiency | John's Tips 2024W13
Unlock productivity with Mac's dictation and Slack's voice notes for efficient, AI-powered text transcription
I’m finding myself using voice to text a lot more these days, especially with the improvements to transcription due to AI over the past couple of years. Sometimes it takes me a lot longer to write down and explain something that i’d be a lot quicker explaining when I’m actually speaking.
This however, conflicts with my goal to reduce the amount of meetings my team have to deal with on a daily basis. One nice way I’ve found to bridge the gap is by using the built-in dictation functionality that comes with your Mac.
Head to System Preferences > Keyboard > Dictation. Turn it on, pick your language, and choose your shortcut that you want to use to enable it.
Once enabled, all you need to do is hit the shortcut you’ve assigned to it (in my case, the microphone key (F5)) and the blue microphone will appear by your cursor.
Hit it again to turn it off.
This only works on supported apps, but I’m yet to come across any of my day to day apps that don’t support it.
But wait! There’s more… (with Slack)
Along the same vein, (and robbing myself a tip for later in the year), if you are using slack, you can send someone a voice note, and slack will provide them with a transcript of it along with the voice note.
Obviously, this removes the ability to edit your text before you send them, but for informal communications, that’s totally acceptable if it saves you 10 minutes trying to figure out how to write your thoughts!
This combination of Mac's dictation and Slack's voice note can significantly enhance your efficiency, making it easier to convey complex ideas quickly without adding to you and your team’s already packed meeting schedules. It's a small shift that has brought about a significant productivity boost in my sphere of influence!
For my past tips check out my past posts on Substack or check out the hashtag #JohnsTipOfTheWeek on LinkedIn.