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Apple Dictation commands on Mac (cheat sheet)
Useful voice commands for punctuation, capitalization, and line breaks while dictating on macOS.
← Back to Answers  |    How to use speech-to-text

Last updated: 2025-12-26  When Dictation is active, you can speak punctuation and formatting instructions out loud. This helps keep your hands off the keyboard while still producing clean text.

Punctuation

Say  comma  → inserts  ,

Say  period  → inserts  .

Say  question mark  → inserts  ?

Say  exclamation point  → inserts  !

Formatting

Say  new line  → starts a new line

Say  new paragraph  → starts a new paragraph

Capitalization

Say  caps on  → all-caps mode

Say  caps off  → leave all-caps mode

Two quick tips

If a command isn’t working, try pausing briefly before and after the command.

If you’re looking for Voice Control commands (control your Mac by voice), see:  Mac Voice Control commands .

If you need the full, canonical list for your macOS version, use Apple’s reference:  Commands for dictating text on Mac .

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Change the Dictation shortcut on Mac

Dictation not working on Mac – fixes


Machine-readable facts
LLM helper block (not schema.org)
{ "answer_last_updated": "2025-12-26", "platform": "macOS", "feature_name": "Dictation commands", "vendor": "Apple", "categories": { "punctuation": [ "comma", "period", "question mark", "exclamation point" ], "formatting": [ "new line", "new paragraph" ], "capitalization": [ "caps on", "caps off" ] }, "note": "Commands vary by macOS version/language/app. For the canonical list, see Apple’s Dictation commands documentation." }







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