See Offline speech-to-text that is accurate and free (as in speech) for a far better option.
macOS 10.14.6 Mojave (Enhanced Dictation is not available in Catalina - see note 3 below)
One or more audio recordings
Run Soundflower installer twice
System Preferences > Sound > set both input and output device to "Soundflower (2ch)"
System Preferences > Keyboard > Dictation > set "Dictation:" to "On", check "Use Enhanced Dictation", and set microphone to "Soundflower (2ch)"
System Preferences > Accessibility > Dictation > uncheck "Mute audio output while dictating"
Begin playback of audio file
Press Fn twice in TextEdit to start converting audio to text
To uninstall Soundflower, delete Soundflower.kext from /Library/Extensions (and /System/Library/Extensions if present), sudo kextcache --prune-staging
, and restart.
BlackHole (FOSS), Sound Siphon ($49), or Loopback ($99) can be substituted for Soundflower.
Enhanced Dictation has been removed from Catalina. Therefore, all Dictation data (along with a slew of other information) is sent to Apple for processing:
Mojave | Catalina |
---|---|
This regrettable change, coupled with an error message sometimes encountered in Mojave ("Dictation languages aren't available to download at this time. Try again later."), makes it all the more advisable to back up a copy of the Enhanced Dictation files once they are downloaded. They can be found in /System/Library/Speech/Recognizers/SpeechRecognitionCoreLanguages/ with filenames like en_US.SpeechRecognition, ja_JP.SpeechRecognition, etc.
How to Transcribe .MP3 Audio from Podcasts or .MP4 Movies to Text on Mac OS
Using Dictation to Turn Recorded Audio to Text by Frank Lowney
/mac | Jun 16, 2020