Running Macros with Voice Control in Catalina

Tips & Tutorials
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For those of us brave or foolhardy enough to run Catalina on our Macs right out of the gate (as of this writing, it's only been out for a day) the new Voice Control accessibility feature finally offers a way to run macros using only our voice. All you need to do is add a new command in the Voice Control section of the Accessibility preference pane:

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then select the "Open URL" action and paste in the URL trigger for any macro you want:

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Bonus tip: if you're like me in that you don't plan to use Voice Control all the time and don't want its microphone overlay on the screen when you aren't using it, you can enable or disable it without going through the preference pane by invoking Siri on your Mac and saying "Turn on/off Voice Control" (ordinarily I would suggest a macro-based way to do this, but if you want to run macros with your voice anyway, I figure you may as well use a voice-based step to do so).

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This functionality has been around for a long while.
Here is a video explaining how to set this up. The OS on the video happens to be Mojave but worked before Mojave as well.

Enjoy,
KC

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I was looking forward to use the voice control function in Catalina so much. Now with my new Imac I thought that I could finally improve my efficiency with this functionality, but I'm struggling a lot...

I'm having the hardest time to run macro's without error messages, on random different actions. The brand new installed OS also runs kind of sluggish. Once I turn of the voice control, everythin works fine. Sooo annoying... any suggestions?

System (2 weeks old):
Latest Imac 27"
3,0‑GHz 6‑core Intel Core i5‑CPU 8th gen
40mb RAM
500GB SSD
Radeon Pro 570X 4 GB

Thanks!
Daniel

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Hi @Daniel_Coffee, did you integrate (1) and (2) into the Accessibility?

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This was amazingly simple to do and very effective...thank you!

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@Gregg_Stebben also take a look at Talon https://talonvoice.com, lower CPU usage than OSX voice app, and has a lot of additional functionality

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Hi, @hello ... Talon is interesting and I would love to lower the CPU usage...what was the learning curve for Talon like for you. I am not a programer, so it's pretty intimidating. Is there any way to use the routines I have created in KM in Talon? Being able to just copy the urls from KM to the Mac voice app has made using the tool incredibly simple. Thanks for any insight you can offer.

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Hi @Gregg_Stebben, I'm in the same boat, not a programmer.

It is quite intimidating at the start, but stick with the basics and it's fine. Also for any questions the Slack channel is quite active.

Yes, you can create a command that runs your Keyboard Maestro scripts using an AppleScript. There should be examples in the Slack.

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Thank you! It's on my list of things to do in the middle of the night when I can't sleep!

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Hey @hello...I finally had a chance to focus on TalonVoice...it was a bit intimidating but I stuck with it over the weekend and cracked the code. So easy to use, so much more accurate and less resource intensive than Apple's Voice Control...thank you!

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