Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 6:
This window shows the current status of Speakable
Items.
3. Hold down the Esc key and speak a command or query, such as “What time is
it?” or “Switch to Finder.”
If you're lucky, what you expect will happen! (And, if you're done playing with this feature
and you want to get rid of that floating window, go back to System Preferences > Accessibility
> Speakable Items > Settings and select the Off radio button.)
OS X comes with many speakable commands for built-in applications, and some third-party
applications add their own commands. To see what it's possible to say, press and hold Esc
to activate Speakable Items and say, “Show me what to say.” A floating window appears
with a list of all possible commands. Although that list is quite long—and Speakable Items
does understand some small variants in phrasing—it doesn't come close to the plain-English
comprehension capabilities of Siri.
However, you can add your own items to this list! Apple provides simple instructions to
do so on the page
OS X Mountain Lion: Create spoken commands
(which also applies to
Mavericks). You might use this, for example, to speak commands like these:
• Say, “Computer, surf!” to run an AppleScript (see
Get to Know AppleScript
)
that opens all your favorite Web sites in Safari tabs.
• Say, “Computer, boilerplate” to insert a predefined reply into an email message
you're composing.
• Say, “Computer, fix this!” to trigger a keystroke that runs a Nisus Writer Pro
macro (see
Create Macros in Nisus Writer Pro
)
to correct formatting issues in
your current document.
If you like, you can eliminate the need to press Esc and instead use a trigger word. For
example, if you preface each command with “Computer…” that can alert Speakable Items
that the next thing you say should be interpreted as a command. To do this, go to System
Preferences > Accessibility > Speakable Items > Listening Key. Select Listen Continuously
