HT202584: Use your voice to enter text on your Mac

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rharanczak
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: Dictation not working in any text field

When I try to activate dictation (both by pressing fn fn and by starting it in the edit menu) nothing happens. I hear a ding as if dictation is ending, but never actually started. No mircophone icon pops up, however I can see that my microphone is still working in the preferences menu. I checked my appstore, everything is updated. Is there something I'm missing?

MacBook Air, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Nov 25, 2013 9:58 PM

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rharanczak

Q: Dictation not working in any text field

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  • by sberman,

    sberman sberman Nov 25, 2013 10:30 PM in response to rharanczak
    Level 8 (39,090 points)
    Nov 25, 2013 10:30 PM in response to rharanczak

    Under System Preferences > Dictation, have you chosen Enhanced Dictation?

     

    If so (I believe that is the default), have you patiently downloaded and installed the 750MB enhanced dictation software?  It would normally automatically download the first time you use Dictation after having installed Mavericks.

  • by Linc Davis,

    Linc Davis Linc Davis Nov 25, 2013 10:46 PM in response to rharanczak
    Level 10 (207,926 points)
    Applications
    Nov 25, 2013 10:46 PM in response to rharanczak

    Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:

     

    ☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

     

    ☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

     

    ☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.

     

    Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select

    View ▹ Show Log List

    from the menu bar.

     

    Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then try the action that you're having trouble with again. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).

    When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.

    Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

    Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

  • by KarenAnneK,

    KarenAnneK KarenAnneK May 24, 2014 9:13 PM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 24, 2014 9:13 PM in response to Linc Davis

    Here is the system log message after cleared and then trying to use dictation. I would appreciate any help you can provide. Thanks so much!

     

    5/24/14 11:11:08.696 PM SpeechDataInstallerd[437]: Download/Installation failed for {
        SDIMClientPortName = "com.apple.speech.speechdatainstallerd-28498";
        SDIMClientProcessID = 215;
        SDIMItemByteSize = 784600336;
        SDIMItemDownloadByteCount = 0;
        SDIMItemDownloadStatus = 3;
        SDIMItemName = "English (United States)";
        SDIMItemPercentComplete = "0.375";
        SDIMItemSecondsRemaining = "-1";
        SDIMItemSoftwareUpdateState = 1;
        SDIMObjectID = "en_US";
        SDIMTagName = "SRCLANGID:com.apple.speech.SpeechRecognitionCoreLangauge.en_US";
        SDIMUserInteractionMode = 0;
    }, Error: Error Domain=SUSoftwareUpdateErrorDomain Code=106 "DownloadFailed" UserInfo=0x7fbb71cbb090 {NSLocalizedDescription=DownloadFailed, NSUnderlyingError=0x7fbb71c56040 "The operation couldn’t be completed. (NSURLErrorDomain error -1012.)"}