What a Broken Wrist Taught Me About iOS 27 Dictation and macOS Voice Control

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Originally published at: What a Broken Wrist Taught Me About iOS 27 Dictation and macOS Voice Control - TidBITS

There is a saying in the disability world that we are all only temporarily able-bodied. No matter who you are, no matter how healthy or capable you are now, there will come a time when you will need the kinds of accommodations that disability advocates have fought for over the years. Whether it’s due to genetics, accident, or inevitable aging, we will all have problems with vision, hearing, mobility, and motor control. Here’s my story.

On 15 September 2026, I started a planned 45-mile ride on my ElliptiGO when, just 0.5 miles in, I crashed on a flat, smooth suburban road with no traffic. I have no recollection of what caused me to go down, but I hit the left side of my head, cracking my helmet, strained muscles in my left hand, fractured the scaphoid bone in my right wrist, and picked up discrete points of road rash on my left ankle, knee, hip, chest, and elbow, plus all down the center of my face: forehead, nose, upper lip, and chin. At least I didn’t damage the tooth implants in three of my front teeth, which had been installed two days earlier after a 19-month process following a February 2025 ice skating accident (on the otherwise fabulous Rideau Canal Skateway in Ottawa).

Some passersby helped me immediately, and good friends who lived around the corner came and got me while Tonya was en route from home. Once she arrived, she took me to the ER, where a CT scan showed no problems (apart from the usual bats in the belfry), but X-rays revealed the broken wrist bone—luckily, a non-displaced fracture of the distal pole of the scaphoid bone, which is apparently the most common and heals quickly and successfully. They cleaned me up and sent me home.

Since then, although the road rash was ultimately minor, if a little visually shocking for a few days, I’ve had quite a lot of pain when using my left hand, and the right hand has either been in a temporary brace (which I was told not to take off but which was extremely painful, cutting off most sensation in my thumb) or in a (much more comfortable) cast. My ability to grip and lift objects has been severely curtailed, leading to exciting new explorations in personal care and marital patience! Unsurprisingly, due to the head trauma (the ER doctor never used the word concussion), I have been quite fatigued and spending a lot of the day in bed, resting, listening to an audiobook, or reading a book, depending on what I feel up to.

Needless to say, I haven’t been nearly as productive work-wise as I normally am. Happily, Glenn Fleishman contributed an article right away, and I have been able to get some work done using iOS 27’s dictation and macOS 27’s Golden Gate Voice Control. And that has provided a whole world of interesting results.

iOS 27 Dictation Now Supports Text Editing

The most useful discovery is that Apple has significantly improved dictation in iOS 27 by adding a few capabilities for editing text from the Voice Control system. In other words, Apple has finally done some of the things I requested in “How iOS and macOS Dictation Can Learn from Voice Control’s Dictation” (31 August 2020). Remember, dictation is what you get when you tap the microphone button on the keyboard, while Voice Control is an all-encompassing system that you turn on in Settings > Accessibility > Voice Control. The problem with leaving Voice Control on permanently is that it’s constantly listening and thus inserting text when you don’t want that, and at times I have felt that its dictation isn’t as good.

Most notably, when you’re using iOS’s regular dictation, you can now change the case of words and phrases by saying “Capitalize phrase” or “Lowercase phrase.” Incorrect capitalization of words drives me up the wall. Equally useful is the ability to fix misheard or misspoken words by saying “Replace phrase with phrase.” Most other Voice Control commands aren’t available in dictation, but you can say “Select phrase” and “Undo that.”

So if you use dictation in Messages a lot, as I do, I strongly encourage you to update iOS 27 and start practicing with the capitalization and replacement commands. They are really useful.

Relying on macOS 27 Voice Control

Unfortunately, while Apple added some of Voice Control’s capabilities to dictation in iOS 27, it didn’t extend that effort to macOS 27 Golden Gate. Put simply, when you use dictation in macOS, you don’t have access to any text-editing commands.

Once I came to that sad realization, I turned on Voice Control in System Settings > Accessibility > Voice Control, and I have been doing pretty much everything on my Mac through Voice Control’s dictation since then. I have no trouble using my MacBook Pro’s trackpad for basic mousing and clicking (dragging long distances is hard; I’m experimenting with Drag Lock), and I can press individual keys on the keyboard, but I can’t type comfortably or accurately because of the pain in my left hand and my right hand’s restricted motion from the cast.

Overall, Voice Control dictation has worked extremely well, thanks in large part to Grammarly (see “Why Grammarly Beats Apple’s Writing Tools for Serious Writers,” 30 January 2025). Although macOS often recognizes words incorrectly, such as the original “enlarge” in the previous sentence, Grammarly does an excellent job of figuring out what I intended to say and offering a correction for either just the word (left) or for multiple words in the sentence (right).

Grammarly suggestions showing corrections like "enlarge" to "in large" and "I'm" to "of," with options to dismiss or see more in Grammarly

You might wonder why I don’t use one of the many AI-powered dictation apps. The simple reason is that they all require you to talk for a while, then transcribe and process the audio before pasting the text back into wherever you’re writing. Even though it’s quick, it doesn’t work for me because I don’t know what I’m going to say until I have seen what I’ve already said, even as I’m writing a sentence. Plus, I frequently go back and tweak wording in sentences I’ve just written—I need word-level dictation for editing. For instance, when writing that last clause, I started with “per-word dictation” but decided I didn’t like it as soon as I saw it and added “for editing” after the fact.

That doesn’t mean Voice Control’s dictation is ideal. It frequently confuses plurals and possessives, not to mention homonyms; it can’t quote text to save its life; it is seemingly incapable of entering an em dash instead of an en dash; and even though I can add special words to its vocabulary, it often fails to recognize them, such that I regularly get “elliptical” instead of the desired “ElliptiGO.” Grammarly can fix only so many of these mistakes.

More annoyingly, Voice Control doesn’t work reliably across all apps. For instance, I can’t get it to capitalize a specific word in Slack, although I can select some text and say “Capitalize that.” It also can’t replace text in Slack. Quite a few other apps suffer from the same limitations.

The absolute worst, however, is Google Docs. No matter what Web browser I use, it insists on capitalizing words I say after a brief pause, presumably thinking I mean to start a new sentence. Plus, it often stops putting in spaces between words for no apparent reason. Google Docs actually has its own internal Voice Typing mode, but in my quick testing, it’s horrible. It also capitalizes words willy-nilly, and worse, I have to keep clicking the microphone button or pressing its keyboard shortcut to activate it—there’s no way to keep it on while in a document.

Finally, the other problem with Voice Control is that it’s always listening. If Tonya comes into the room and starts talking to me, it picks up her voice, and if I don’t realize it in time and stop Voice Control from listening, it picks up my responses too. We end up with entire conversations in my documents, which makes for surreal reading and extra editing later. Similarly, if I need to do something on the iPhone and use dictation there, it also puts the same words in whatever document is open on the Mac. Voice Control has functional “Stop Listening” and “Start Listening” commands, but I haven’t internalized them yet. I have some ideas for how to solve this problem that I’ll share more about later.

In the meantime, TidBITS may not be quite its usual self for a while until I’m feeling better. I hope things will be back to normal soon, although research suggests I’ll be in the cast for at least 6 weeks.

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Thanks for sharing what happened and the insights into how Apple is and isn’t helping you out. I hope you have a rapid and complete recovery!

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Thanks for performing advance reconnaissance for my upcoming rotator cuff surgery on my right side—my mousing hand, but fortunately not the one I use to write (or throw a ball, but not any time soon). I feel lucky in terms of the 27 releases timing. Get well soon!

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FWIW I had arthroscopic surgery on both shoulders: 2012 and 2016. I had to sleep in a recliner and dictate in 2016 to iPhone. Best believe I dictated “undo”, “strike that”, “new line”, and other verbal tics.

Advice I was given is that even if you feel you can do without anti inflammatory meds —typically NSAIDs, KEEP TAKING THEM. Healing of the injuries is more important than your pain tolerance. If it’s time to take your next dose, take it! Until the doctor tells you you can stop.

@ace, @glennf, I take dictation better than voice control. I hereby offer you my separate professional mobile. Call me most anytime, and let me help you. I could really use the experience as I go for a new start in life and career.

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Adam, as a keen (aging) cyclist who’s had some slightly spectacular crashes can I say: “all the very best with your recovery!!”

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So sorry to hear about your accident Adam and I wish you a speedy recovery. Thank goodness you wear a helmet while cycling!

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Sorry to read that you hurt yourself while moving along on two wheels… I wish you a quick convalescence!

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Hey Adam, get well soon!

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Ah, the joys of biking…

Mind yourself @ace. Take it easy.

I may be heading into some hand surgery soon. I shall be visiting these options you shared above. This whole field, dictation, voice control, has a way to go before AI can be our true assistant.

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My sympathies over your accident, Adam, and best wishes for a rapid recovery. Take it easy.

I can relate to both aspects of your article: my frustration with iOS dictation has already been over-exposed here, so I won’t revisit that, but a few years ago I broke my humerus, leading to a spell of one-handed life. I became quite adept at one-handed typing (who needs capital letters anyway?), and accumulated a small collection of kitchen gadgets for the disabled chef, such as a plastic thing for opening ring-pull cans single-handed and an electric can opener, which works as intended about 50% of the time. One thing that I did learn was that chopping carrots requires three people – the knife-wielder and two experienced fielders at Deep Cover (a Brit cricketing term – not sure of the baseball equivalent) to catch the airborne post-chop carrot fragments.

As for dictation, Tonia may give you some issues, but my #1 cat is quite vocal: his interjections and my responses can make interesting additions to dictated documents.

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I am sorry to hear about what happened, Adam. Wishing you a speedy and uneventful recovery.

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My sympathy on the fall and the broken wrist. I shattered my left elbow on ice about 15 years ago, and left me one-armed for nearly two months. Luckily I’m right-handed, so I had five fingers, but touch typing requires ten fingers, so I was slowed much more than a factor of two. Give your hands and head time to heal, and you should go easy on the rest of your body after being so banged up. You may not notice some damage until later.

Your experience with voice control was interesting because it shows designers fail to allow for temporary limitations of the user. The lack of an effective voice editing feature can be a serious limitation, as you pointed out. Take it easy as you heal.

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An important afterthought – an event like that also could be caused by a seizure or a mini-stroke that caused a blackout long enough to lose control of the bike. That from my wife who has now well-controlled epilepsy.

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That is exactly why my doctor has referred me to cardiology and neurology. As much as I don’t like getting into the medical flowcharts, it seems worth investigating since I have no good explanations for either this crash or the 2025 ice skating accident.

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Oh, yes. Doctors are realizing how severe falls can be as you get older.

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Oh my goodness, @ace , I’m glad you wear a helmet!! Get well soon!!

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Buena sera from Sardinia, Adam – wishing you a speedy and full recovery!

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First and most important, I wish you a speedy recovery with reduced levels of discomfort and rapid improvement in regaining your usual capabilities.

Second, in your seventh full paragraph, you gave the following example of the ability to correct misheard or misspoken words by saying “Replace phrase with phrase” [bold formatting mine]. Methinks one of those italicized words was intended to be different from the other. :wink:

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First, a comment, then a story:

Although the ED doc never used the word “concussion,” it’s pretty likely you had one if you have no memory of what caused you to fall (retrograde amnesia is often a hallmark of concussive closed head injury).

OK, TWO stories;

Two decades ago, most of my rides were with a group of 3-6 other physician buddies in Sonoma County, CA. On one of those rides we were finishing up in the glorious wine country in a pretty high-velocity paceline. I glanced to my right to look at one winery’s garden and ran into the rear tire of the guy immediately in front of me. That impact flipped me into the air and I landed on the pavement ON my helmet. My fellow riders tell me I lay motionless on the road for several minutes, the fact that I was still breathing and had a pulse the most optimistic bit of data available. The ED was 30 miles away, and I don’t remember ANYTHING of the accident except gradually becoming aware of the sounds of the ambulance tires on the pavement probably 20 miles distant from the scene. However, at least ***I*** have no sense of a subsequent permanent lessening of my cognitive abilities.

Fast forward 15 years, to another (and not the ONLY other ) episode of kissing the ground: Now living, retired, in Bozeman, Mt, I approached an intersection between a state highway (me pedaling southward on a paved multi-use pathway paralleling the highway and a east to west rural county road. The intersection was controlled by stoplights and crosswalk signs. Traffic headed west was stopped because those lights were green for highway traffic. So, I didn’t stop at the intersection, but the first auto driver in the line of vehicles on the rural road waiting to turn right didn’t look to HER right before beginning HER right turn. I have CRYSTAL CLEAR memories of that impact and the immediate and intense pain in my neck that followed. I also remember the prompt arrival of first responders, one of whom, incredulously, asked me “can you stand up?” (to this day I shudder to think that guy was entitled to do on-scene evaluation of people who might have cervical spine injuries)!

I informed him forcefully that I was NOT about to move ONE BIT, despite the fact that my body was blocking traffic in the intersection. Once transported to the ED I learned from the CT scans that I DID have fractures of the 2nd and 3rd cervical vertebral bodies and the “posterior elements” of the C-spine that form a cage surrounding the spinal cord. To make matters worse, over the course of several minutes, I developed profound vocal hoarseness, which can be a sign of injury to one of the CRANIAL nerves (that exit directly from the brain).

Long story shortened: the hoarseness was caused by the sudden impact against my neck, which snap-stretched the muscular vocal cords enough to cause a hematoma (blood clot) to develop on one of them, rather than there being any injury to the cranial nerves. The incident “entitled me” to my only supine helicopter ride, to the nearest neurosurgical trauma unit, about 100 miles distant (EVERYTHING in Montana not immediately next door is ≥ 100 miles away). Two months later, when a follow-up CT showed that I hadn’t made new bone in my cervical spine sufficiently quickly to mean my neck was out of danger, my surgeons told me I’d need “fusion” of my cervical spine extending from the 2nd through the 6th cervical vertebrae, and THAT would mean I’d barely be able to rotate my neck, would NEVER be able to ride a bike again, and MIGHT never even be able to drive a car again.

At that point I was still wearing a stabilizing cervical collar (those same surgeons had told me they would have preferred I have a “halo” device bolted directly to my skull at the top and resting on my shoulders at its bottom (ugh). So, I had med school classmates who’d become neurologists put me in touch with academic neurotrauma surgeons on both coasts, both of whom told me that the very first images taken of my injuries in the Bozeman ED had also demonstrated why I wasn’t killed by my “hangman’s” fracture; I’d been born with a fairly common “birth defect,” a congenital fusion of the 2nd to third vertebral body, which had prevented injury to my spinal cord or the nerves emanating from it. The second of them, in Seattle, went further. He saw me on Zoom (the Boston guy just talked to me on the phone). Looking at me on his computer screen, he announced "that cervical collar looks REALLY uncomfortable. You don’t need that—in fact, you NEVER needed it. Take it off; take it off NOW, while I’m watching. (of course, it WAS an ENTIRELY appropriate part of my on-scene first responder care, before the images were obtained at the ED).

However, even now, every time I take a bike ride of > 15-20 miles, my right posterior neck and upper arm develop aching discomfort that means I’ll probably NEVER ride more than 30 miles in one go again.

I think an ElliptiGO bike might be good for me. However, I never knew they existed until yesterday. I’ve already contacted the company, and we have hopes that during upcoming visits to California or Utah they might be able to put me in touch with someone who could facilitate a test ride. I’m a bit cautious, however, because AT almost 80, my sense of balance isn’t what it once was, common even in people my age with NO prior history of major trauma.

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Or not. Made perfect sense to me.