Apple’s Dictation feature has been a great assistive technology on their platforms. Over time it has made its way into general use, e.g., “Hey, Siri…”. It can even be used for text entry in our applications like DEVONthink.
Enabled in System Settings > Keyboard > Dictation, the logical use case for dictation is when composing a document. Start a new rich text or Markdown document, invoke dictation, and you’ve got a virtual assistant “typing” for you. But you can also use dictation in many other text fields in DEVONthink like the Take Note section of the Sorter, or the Finder Comments or Annotationsfields in the Info: Reminders & Annotations inspector.
Dictation is best suited for at least a sentence or more. Smaller word fragments can be typed in quickly enough. That being said, you can use dictation in places where you’d enter less text, for example when entering tags, e.g., in the Tags bar. For creating new tags, this could be useful but it isn’t going to make autocompletion suggestions as the characters aren’t being entered one at a time.
If you are running the Pro or Server edition of DEVONthink and have set up access to external AI, use dictation for more efficient AI interactions. In the Chat Assistant, place the cursor in the text field, open dictation, and speak your inquiry. This also works with the Chat - Query or Chat - Continue if smart actions. For AI-powered searches, place the cursor in the toolbar search field, press Return, and click the AI button to open the Search Assistant. Now dictate your query and let AI try to determine the appropriate search for it. As we think faster than we type, compound searches can be dictated more easily.
And while dictation doesn’t always “hear” perfectly, is works well often enough to provide a little less stress on the hands and some quicker entry.
Thanks @eboehnisch, very useful post. Could you find the time to write a complementary post on the best journaling workflow on both the Mac and mobile platforms, including the use of Apple Dictation? It would be great to hear about the journaling workflows of other users also since the community posts on this subject are rather old. I’m starting to experiment with this myself, and it would be wonderful to exchange experiences here on the forum. But as a starter, I would really like to hear about the ‘standard’ workflow the developers themselves use or presuppose. Thanks!
Thanks for the reply. I still think it will be useful to know if and how the developers are using DT for journaling, but yes I will start a topic and see if I can get a conversation going around this.
Using the “Daily Journal” (there are two) templates is a clue why they suggest. Whether they use these templates–and I would be surprised if the Developers used all the templates they provide, is probably irrelevant. Me: I don’t journal. Sorry.
No offense . I am aware of the templates, but I have no idea about the best way to make use of them for journaling or whether there are other and easier methods. So I just opened a topic for users who have some experience with this to react.
What have you tried that you are unhappy with? What is best for some may not be best to you. Perhaps explain your friction points and people will be better able to give opinions.
The main friction point is that I don’t journal. Since I always have DT open since it has become my main hub for saving and ordering data, I guess the friction to add thoughts and come back to them will be lower if I use one and the same application. Neither the apps I used in the past nor paper journals sticked after some initial enthousiasm. And yes, that may be a purely mentality problem.
Well, with macOS, the idea of “one app” is less important. It has “windows” to run and have visible multiple apps at the same time.
You don’t HAVE to use DEVONthink, but fine if you do. Or if you wish to use another “notebook” app, text editor, word processor, or dedicated Journaling app (Day One or something like that) you could open that in another window. put one as 1/3rd the screen and the other 2/3rds the screen, or press Cmd-Tab to toggle between apps, or put have each on their own macOS “desktop”.
To me I think the main sticking point with not journalling is lack of interest and enthusiasm for doing so. That’s it for me.
All that down to personal preference. There is no “best” way to pass on, IMHO.
I use DT to journal and a search in this forum will show some discussions about it. There’s two main strategies -
One document per day with sections or headings or tables or something like that to break it up
One group per day with documents within for each note or activity or what have you.
After those two options, well actually BEFORE those two options, you can decide what kind of journal you’re making.
Just thoughts and ideas maybe?
Or maybe a tally of the day’s events and some basic stats about your day?
Everything you read, watched and listened to?
Photos yes/no?
Do you like markdown?
How do you want to read it? Never, always, maybe in a year…
I almost exclusively journal in iOS although I sync my Journal DB to my computer. I use iOS shortcuts to prep and format markdown entries for a one file/day journal entry.
But sincerely I would suggest that you start with a document for a day, write down whatever it is you were thinking might be journal worthy and let that tell you what it’s going to be. Dump the words and sort it out later. If you find you want more structure or a way to find things later you can add format as you go. Let the basic idea guide you and not get bogged down with the fascination of organizing something you haven’t even written yet.
. I am aware of the templates, but I have no idea about the best way to make use of them for journaling or whether there are other and easier methods. So I just opened a topic for users who have some experience with this to react.