New Dictation workflows

“Hey Mac, show me top movies”

Last issue we mentioned that El Capitan includes a bunch of new Dictation Commands, including some for not only searching with Spotlight, but for navigating and inspecting whatever results it finds – and there’s more! First, make sure you have turned on Enhanced Dictation in System Preferences > Dictation & Speech

Next, go to the Accessibility pane, scroll down to Dictation, optionally set a dictation phrase, then click Dictation Commands. Put a check mark next to ‘Enable advanced commands’ and click the + button that then appears above it. Now you can define a custom phrase that, when you say it, will trigger a workflow. That’s not what’s new, though.

Set the command to work in all apps or a specific one, then click the pop-up next to Perform and select Run Workflow. You’ll see a list of premade workflows that are newly provided by Apple as part of El Capitan. The first three, for starting a new audio, video or screen recording in QuickTime, might save you clicking about in that app if you use those capabilities a lot. It’s the ones that control iTunes that are perhaps of broader appeal, especially if you use a Mac as a media centre in your living room.

If you’re interested in learning about AppleScript to expand upon these behaviours, select one, click the Save Workflow As button that appears, then open the workflow in Automator.