FAQs

• What's included when I purchase VoiceCode?

  The purchase is for the VoiceCode software only.

  • Dragon must be purchased separately.
  • We highly recommend investing in a good microphone setup (optional)
  • Any other hardware or accessories, such as the SmartNav or other mouse replacements are separate and completely optional.

• What versions of Dragon are supported?

  Any version of Dragon for Mac 5.* or 6.* currently works.

• What versions of macOS are supported?

  Yosemite, El Capitan, and Sierra. (Others may work fine, but haven't been verified)

• I've heard Dragon 6 is buggy, how well does it work?

  Dragon 6 definitely has some issues that will hopefully be resolved in future Dragon updates. Fortunately, VoiceCode does not rely on any of the Dragon features that are broken in Dragon 6. Specifically, users have reported the Dragon commands window does not work, among other issues. On the positive side, we HAVE noticed actual improvement in speech recognition accuracy after upgrading to Dragon 6. Also it starts up much faster than previous Dragon versions (useful if you need to restart dragon for any reason)

• Who should I contact if something goes wrong?

  Please DO NOT contact Nuance for any VoiceCode-related issues, even if you are having trouble with Dragon. We do not want them to have any negative feelings toward this project :) We are stretching Dragon WAY past its designed purpose. Chances are if something is not working there is a simple fix, just post your issue on our Slack channel

• Are other speech-recognition backends supported?

  Theoretically any speech backend can work with VoiceCode, the problem is that Dragon is currently the only speech backend that can handle thousands of commands and custom words and vocab while maintaining acceptable speed and accuracy. As soon as another speech recognition solution proves to be viable we will work very quickly to support it as an official integration.

• What programming-languages can I use VoiceCode for?

  VoiceCode is programming-language-agnostic. It gives you lots of low-level building blocks, with which you could program in any programming-language. The available packages cover all of the building blocks needed to build code in most languages. When you find a certain programming task that is performed frequently, and takes too many "low-level commands", that is the time to create a custom command that does multiple things from a single word or phrase, such as a single word to insert a complete for-loop, or if-else statement. Alternatively, there may already be an extra package for your programming language that implements some of these higher-level macros.

• Can VoiceCode be used to dictate regular "prose" text in addition to code?

  Yes! All the same formatting, editing, and selection commands that work for coding work equally well for writing regular text such as emails or documentation. Once you get fast at writing code, there is no need to relearn a different set of commands for dictating text, which is a major benefit compared to some other systems that have "Command Mode" and "Dictation Mode" as separate things with different behavior.

• Can VoiceCode be customized?

  Absolutely! Almost every aspect of VoiceCode is customizable using JavaScript. We provide "events" for custom code to hook into nearly everything that happens behind the scenes. See events or custom code for details.

• Can VoiceCode do [ X ]?

  VoiceCode takes spoken input and performs actions. If your computer can do [ X ] then so can VoiceCode. It has an extensive API for automating computer actions, and can call out to other programs, shell scripts, or web-services if needed. See actions for details.

• How long does it take to learn VoiceCode?

  It varies for each user. If you are good at learning languages or memorizing things, it will come fairly naturally - each person has different techniques they like to use: flashcards, cheat sheets, etc. We don't make a guarantee on learning time, but we estimate if you spend 3 hours per day learning VoiceCode, you will be able to replace 40% of your keystrokes within the first week, and 80% within the first month of usage, while maintaining a similar level of productivity.

• What programs does VoiceCode work with?

  It typically works with any program, however Dragon has been known to crash when using certain programs such as Microsoft Word. For some programs we have special integrations that allow commands to have extra powers. To check if an application has special integrations, check out the package registry.

• What code-editors (or IDEs) does it work with?

  • Atom ⭐⭐⭐⭐
  • Sublime Text ⭐⭐⭐
  • Vim ⭐⭐⭐
  • Xcode ⭐⭐
  • JetBrains IDEs (WebStrom, IntelliJ, PhpStorm, etc.) ⭐ (Only tested with newest JetBrains versions and Dragon 6)
  • Emacs ⭐
  • BBEdit ⭐
  • TextWrangler ⭐

    Legend

  • ⭐⭐⭐⭐ = has a lot of integrated features
  • ⭐⭐⭐ = has some integrated features
  • ⭐⭐ = has a few integrated features
  • ⭐ = works, but has no special integration yet

• What if my favorite editor is not highly integrated with VoiceCode?

  All the editor integrations are open-source and we gladly welcome and encourage contributions. See packages for more info.

• When will the Windows version become available?

  Now that we have ported the entire codebase into a cross-platform architecture, development on the Windows version will move from "proof of concept" to an alpha release. We have not solidified on a timeframe for this yet.