The last time Microsoft added a noteworthy new feature in OneNote was back in October last year. It was designed to help users take notes without distractions and was limited to Windows. The software giant has recently announced another new functionality for OneNote, but this time around, it"s for Mac users.
Microsoft has finally announced the "Dictate" capability for OneNote for Mac. "Dictate" brings support for "AI-backed voice commands" to help you with adding, formatting, editing, and organizing your text on OneNote. In simple words, you can use your voice to take notes on the OneNote Mac client. Voice commands functionality currently supports more than 50 languages, some of which include Chinese (Simplified), English, Danish, French, Japanese, Spanish, Swedish, and more. You see the complete list of supported languages here.
While many OneNote users on Mac will appreciate the voice commands feature, Windows users have had this feature since last year. It also reached the OneNote web client on the same day. However, it has taken more than four months since then to bring similar treatments to OneNote for Mac. Worth noting is the fact that "Dictate" for the OneNote Mac app is currently available for the Beta Channel users running Version 16.68 (Build 22121100) or later.
In its official blog post, Microsoft promised to improve "Dictate" capability by "adding new voice commands as well as some that are already available in other Office apps to OneNote." The improvement could arrive in the next few months. Currently, some of the capabilities you can try in OneNote for Mac include saying "delete that" or "undo" to delete a mistake, "pause dictation" to break and stop dictating, and more.
However, "Dictate" for OneNote for Mac has the following known issues:
- Not all voice commands currently available in OneNote for the web or in Word across platforms are available in OneNote for Mac (such as formatting and lists). Click the Help button on the Dictation toolbar to see which commands are supported on a given platform.
- Some supported languages are considered Preview Languages, and may have lower accuracy and/or limited punctuation support. For a complete list, please check the More Information > Spoken languages supported section in this help topic.
Do you use your voice to take notes on OneNote? Let us know in the comments section.