Voice Control and Vox dictation both want to transcribe what you say. Decide which
one is doing it before you start, or you will get both.
Setting it up
1
Turn on Voice Control
System Settings, then Accessibility, then Voice Control. Turn it on. The first
time, macOS downloads a speech model.
2
Set Vox as the Voice Control microphone
In the same panel, there is a microphone selector. Choose Vox. See
Use Vox as a microphone anywhere.
3
Turn off Vox dictation
4
Optionally map a button to sleep and wake Voice Control
Voice Control responds to “go to sleep” and “wake up”, and it has no default
keyboard shortcut. TODO: check whether a shortcut can be assigned in the Voice
Control command list, and if so, map a Vox button to it.
Why the close microphone helps
Voice Control listens all the time, so it has to decide constantly whether what it heard was a command. A microphone close to your mouth gives it a much better signal against room noise, which cuts down on both missed commands and commands firing when someone else in the room was talking.Useful commands to know
Voice Control commands vs Vox voice commands
They are separate systems and they do not know about each other. Vox commands are covered in Voice commands. If you are running Voice Control, use its command list rather than Vox’s, since only one of them should be transcribing at a time.Troubleshooting
Voice Control does not list Vox as a microphone
Voice Control does not list Vox as a microphone
Voice Control reads the device list at startup. Turn Voice Control off and on
again with the device connected.
Commands fire when you did not mean them to
Commands fire when you did not mean them to
Say “go to sleep” when you are not actively driving the Mac. TODO: consider
recommending a Vox button mapped to a Voice Control sleep shortcut here.
Everything is being typed instead of run as commands
Everything is being typed instead of run as commands
Voice Control is in dictation mode with a text field focused. Click away from the
text field, or say “stop dictating”.