How to keep sound from muting while using dictation?
Whenever I try to use the dictation feature in OSX, it mutes my sound. I want to hear the audio I'm playing in iTunes or somewhere else while I have dictation enabled. How can I do that?
You need to set some hidden preferences to make this work (OS X 10.9 - Mavericks). Open Terminal and enter the two commands below:
defaults write com.apple.SpeechRecognitionCore AllowAudioDucking -bool NO
defaults write com.apple.speech.recognition.AppleSpeechRecognition.prefs DictationIMAllowAudioDucking -bool NO
After doing this turn off dictation in Systems Preferences, wait a few seconds and then re-enable it. You should now be able to dictate while audio is playing. I’ve only tried this while using a headset/headphones, it’s probably not advisable without. :)
To restore your system to it’s virginal state, run these commands in Terminal and then restart dictation:
defaults delete com.apple.SpeechRecognitionCore AllowAudioDucking
defaults delete com.apple.speech.recognition.AppleSpeechRecognition.prefs DictationIMAllowAudioDucking
Found via: https://gist.github.com/rmangino/8388849
This preference was made visible in System Preferences, so you don't need to run Terminal commands any more. Go to the Accessibility preference pane, choose Dictation and disable Mute audio output while dictating.
The program Audio Hijack Pro can handle this.
Add system audio on right, then press hijack 1st and mute 2nd.
It's possible to use Voice Control's voice dictation while listening to something on YouTube. At first it wasn't working on Google Chrome but I had to restart the app and now it's working.
The only weird thing is this voice dictation never really stopped so there is never a click sound that says voices dictation is over. Even though I clicked it on so maybe have to restart my whole system but as it stands this is what it does and it looks OK.
I also might mention that it disables it is the dictation button so that's kind of weird and even though I am using AirPods Pro it seems like it's not as tight of a voice dictation accuracy as the original voice dictation.
