MBP, Sequoia 15.5.
Setting a dictation language also changes the keyboard. When I use F5 to start dictation I can click on EN (see pic below) and change to another language. If I don’t, the dictated text is unusable. But this also changes the keyboard settings, but the hardware is obviously NOT changing, I want to continue to type and amend my text with what my MBP has.
What am I doing wrong?
Could you explain exactly what languages you are trying to switch between? Are you dictating in English but then want to type in German or something and don’t get the right keys?
British keyboard, I dictate e.g. in German. The dictation result is good, but maybe not perfect, when I amend the dictated text I realise that my actual QWERTY was switched to QWERTZ and this German keyboard also has Umlauts where I expect [ ] { } \
Switching back is possible, but doing this in every sentence, just because I need to amend my text is a pain.
So you want to dictate German and then compose German with the English qwerty layout, right?
I see I only have Sonoma available at the moment, and this seems to work ok. Does the behavior you see occur in all apps? I will try to check Sequoia later.
Might it be easier using keyboard shortcuts? There are (disabled on my system) shortcuts to select the previous input source (Ctrl-space) and to select the next source in the input menu (Ctrl-Opt-space):
Apple MAIL, PAGES and MS Word react identical. Last year I used to dictate in Sonoma, the problem didn’t exist then, but my memory may fail me on this.
Apple explains here how I can and apparently should change the input source (a strange word to use for keyboard layout). But I don’t want to change the keyboard layout, quite the opposite. Surely there must be many people who work in more than one language. Who would connect a different keyboard just because they need to dictate in another language? Such a fundamentally weird concept.
@Shamino I wanted to try out your suggestion, but as soon as I switch them on I get “used by another action”. How do I know which other action?
EDIT: I reset to “RESTORE Defaults” in above screenshot and can now use CTRL+Space to change the language. Bizarrely when I start from German abbreviated to DE) I briefly see “GB”, then the menu shows the microphone and “EN”.
Sounds as if language and country are mixed up.
I think they are just distinct. GB stands for the British input source (keyboard layout), which is slightly different from the US keyboard layout. EN is for the dictation language.
I don’t know why your shortcuts had the Command symbol in them, these have used Control for a number of years now.
Apple must have somehow thought that people dictating in German would usually also want to use the standard German keyboard mapping, and thus that switching to this automatically could be a useful “feature”. You can let them know otherwise via their feedback channels.
CMD-Space and CMD-OPT-Space are used by Spotlight/search services. I’m surprised your system has those keys assigned that way, unless you (or some app) changed them in the past.
Glad to hear that worked.
No idea though why the shortcut was set differently.
The fact that the keyboard layout changes when only the language should be switched is still a problem and has an impact on fluent working.
Apple was for so many years so well ahead of others when it came to language support, I wonder why they can’t be a bit more logical. They did remind us of “flags are not languages” a while ago, but now this.
Guys & gals, specifically @tom3 and @Shamino
I found the cause and a solution.
Under Keyboard > Text Input > Input Sources I had British (my keyboard) and German (as I frequently speak & write in German)
Under Dictation > Languages I had UK & Germany ticked. Mind you, these are countries, not languages.
With these settings the keyboard layout switches automatically when the dictation language is changed. When I take German away under Text Input > Input Sources, this doesn’t happen.
Using dictation just got a whole lot easier for me.
[Text in italics amended, due to a previous mix up of the relevant options ]
Thanks! Just to be clear, in Keyboard > Dictation > Languages, under the German category, you now do not have any of the boxes for the 3 possible varieties (Austria, Germany, Switzerland) checked? And this now lets you dictate in German but then type right away with the Britsh qwerty input source (instead of formerly the German qwertz input source)?
Sorry @tom3, I had to amend my message, see penultimate paragraph.
I took German away under Text Input > Input Sources
I took German away under Text Input > Input Sources
Aha! Yes, makes sense if you always use the British layout, no need to have the German one on the list. I gather having the autocorrect/spellcheck, etc for English instead of German is not an issue for your purposes.
I would need said spellcheck for both English and German, why did you mention the above?
My mistake, I was confusing the OS. You can of course have both spell checks in MacOS regardless of the input sources via system settings > keyboard > text input > edit > spelling > setup
