Are you someone who needs to produce long form text content, but is slow at typing?
Perhaps you’re a freelance writer trying to make more money, but with only so many hours in the day.
Or maybe you’re a student trying to finish your thesis, or a digital nomad juggling work with travel.
Whatever your situation – you’re sure to benefit from learning how to voice type on Mac.
I’ve never been a great manual typist. I didn’t learn how to touch type, so my approach to online writing used to involve pecking at the keyboard with several fingers (I suspect this approach is common for many bloggers these days, as typing is no longer taught at school).
Learning how to voice type on Mac has absolutely revolutionized my writing output.
Since learning how to voice type, I’ve easily produced articles of 6,000 words or more in a days work, and finished my PhD thesis (over 50,000 words) in just over one month.
As a freelance writer for SaaS companies, my basic rate per word is about 65 cents. If I can write a 6,000 word article comfortably in a day, I’ve got the potential to earn $3,900 in one day.
With voice dictated content, once you get used to the process, you can produce natural sounding and technically correct text, without much need for further editing.
For niche site owners, the best thing about writing a blog post using voice typing on Mac is that you can easily produce original work, and write faster without relying overly on AI tools (although they can still be a valuable addition to your blogging tool kit) .
Voice typing enables me to write so quickly, that I now rarely bother to hire freelance writers for my websites.
How to Voice Type on Mac
First things first, we need to know how to activate voice type on Mac. It’s pretty simple – just double tap the ‘fn’ key (found at the bottom left hand corner of your Mac keyboard).
You’ll see a little microphone icon box pop up next to the cursor. The microphone icon will flash as it increases and decreases its level in response to the sound of your voice.
Once you finish voice typing, just click the ‘done’ button and the microphone will disappear.
You’ll probably find it strange when you first begin voice typing.
You have to get used to talking out loud, enunciating each word more clearly than usual, and speaking out punctuation, such as “comma”, or “full stop”.
Here’s a list of all the commands you can use for voice typing on Mac.
You can activate enhanced dictation mode to get access to a huge range of voice commands for the Mac.
How to Voice Type on Mac using Word or Apple Pages
Both the Word and Pages word processing programs work really well with voice typing on Mac.
I like to fire up a blank document, put in the outline, and quickly flesh out each section with quick voice dictating. I’d say it’s about 97% accurate, and gets better over time as it learns the sound of your voice.
I’ve also had really good results using voice typing in Evernote, Notion, and WordPress – to produce this blog post you’re reading now.
It’s an extremely flexible tool that works anywhere on your Mac where there’s a text input box.
But, there’s one major exception: Google Docs.
How to Voice Type on Mac using Google Docs
Voice typing in Google Docs is a bit trickier.
The inbuilt Mac voice typing tool doesn’t work in Google Docs. Instead, you have to use Google’s own voice typing feature inside the Docs window.
Personally, I find the Google voice typing tool to be slightly less accurate than the one on Mac.
But Mac voice typing does work pretty well for writing emails within Gmail.
Benefits of using voice typing on Mac
If producing original content at 3x the usual speed isn’t enough for you, here are several specific use cases where voice typing can be really transformational.
First, it’s great for producing natural-sounding scripts for presentations or YouTube videos.
Voice typing makes it super simple to type just as you speak, helping you avoid difficult vocabulary or complex sentence structures.
I’ve delivered totally scripted presentations that came across as relaxed and natural – all thanks to using voice typing on Mac.
Second, voice typing is great for writing SEO content for blogs. Here’s my basic process.
I like to have several windows open on my large monitor, containing the various sources I’m using to research my article (e.g., other blogs, forums, subreddits, YouTube videos, and academic papers).
Thanks to voice typing, I can read and digest the research materials, then produce my own original text based on how I’m interpreting them through my own lens.
This approach makes sure the resulting text is totally original, while also being fast to produce.
Final Thoughts
Learning how to voice type on Mac is an excellent skill to master for anyone who produces online content.
Harnessing this powerful tool properly will turbocharge your niche site output, boost your freelance writer earning potential, and help you power faster through boring administrative tasks such as replying to emails.
