Final Draft 13 takes advantage of the dictation feature built into the Mac operating system. It understands natural-language voice commands to perform keystrokes and enter text. At this time, only English is supported, and only MacOS devices allow dictation. This currently cannot be done on Windows.
To use Dictation:
- Go to Mac System Preferences (found in the Dock);
- Go to Sounds and choose the Input tab;
- Select a microphone (an external microphone connected to the computer or, if the computer has one, the built-in microphone);
- Verify that the mic is picking up your voice;
- Dismiss the Preferences window;
- Open Final Draft;
- Go to the Final Draft 13 menu > Preferences > General and if it not already checked, check the box for Speech Commands, then click OK;
- Choose Edit > Start Dictation or press the Command key twice or click the microphone icon in the status bar:
The voice commands “return” and “tab” are interpreted by Final Draft as those keys on the keyboard.
The voice command “new paragraph” will break the line in which blinking cursor resides and wait for the user to issue the command for the type of paragraph type desired, i.e. “new paragraph… scene heading.”
The voice commands “period,” “comma,” “question mark,” “semi-colon” and other punctuation marks at the end of a sentence will insert the announced mark.
The voice commands “undo” and “redo” will perform the same actions as Edit > Undo <last action> and Edit > Redo <last action>.
To stop dictation, click the Done button in the microphone icon.