Programmatically toggle dictation on MacOS

Question

Due to injury I use dictation on MacOS:

As can be seen from the screenshot, I can toggle it using a keyboard shortcut.

I wish to toggle it from code (preferably ObjC).

I can manually inject the events:

// Assumes CTRL OPT CMD Space toggles dictation
void toggle_dictation()
{
    // NOTE: To return created event in tap-callback:
    //      cgEvent = [my_nsEvent CGEvent];
    //      CFRetain(cgEvent);

    //unsigned short keyCode_SPACE = 49;

    NSEvent* down_event = [NSEvent keyEventWithType: NSEventTypeKeyDown
                                           location: NSZeroPoint
                                      modifierFlags: NSEventModifierFlagControl | NSEventModifierFlagOption | NSEventModifierFlagCommand
                                          timestamp: 0.0
                                       windowNumber: 0
                                            context: nil
                                         characters: @" "
                        charactersIgnoringModifiers: @" "
                                          isARepeat: false
                                            keyCode: 0 /* keyCode_SPACE */ ];

    NSEvent* up_event = [NSEvent keyEventWithType: NSEventTypeKeyUp
                                         location: NSZeroPoint
                                    modifierFlags: 0
                                        timestamp: 0.0
                                     windowNumber: 0
                                          context: nil
                                       characters: @" "
                      charactersIgnoringModifiers: @" "
                                        isARepeat: false
                                          keyCode: 0 /* keyCode_SPACE */ ];

    CGEventPost(kCGHIDEventTap, [down_event CGEvent]);
    CGEventPost(kCGHIDEventTap, [up_event CGEvent]);
}

... but this is clumsy as it depends on my chosen shortcut.

Is there any way to do it with an API call?

This may help... https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4533177 — Mark Setchell, Jul 14 '19 at 12:29
If it helps, you can also use Siri to turn dictation on and off — TheNextman, Jul 20 '19 at 04:57

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 18 '19 at 17:50

Yes, there is:

NSSpeechRecognizer *recognizer = [[NSSpeechRecognizer alloc] init];
// start
[recognizer startListening];
// stop
[recognizer stopListening];

The full API is here:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsspeechrecognizer?language=objc

Programmatically toggle dictation on MacOS

1 Answers1