WOW…so after doing a forum search for the topic of using Dragon Naturally Speaking with Scrivener…I’m finding the posts are older than King Tut’s tomb…LOL
So I had been dragging my feet, I was going to drop 100+ dollars on Speech Professional 7 to handle the process of dictating and transferring to Scrivener…as often happens, I go to the page to order, only to find out that they have ceased production on the product and it is no longer available to purchase.
The last thoughts I found posted here dealt with “How I do this on my MAC” which really wasn’t a lot of help.
Has anyone here happened to find “The Magic Codex” to make this a painless process and just never posted it, or is this a Grail quest that will never be solved?
I use dragon with Scrivener. Dictating can be done directly into Scrivener, but if dictate in the dictation box. (I actually use Autobox with dragon) which is an enhanced dictating box and then transfer into Scrivener and this allows me to use all the Dragon dictating commands. Occassionally, I have to make up words for locations or character titles, but the vocabulary is surprisingly robust. Feel much less tired after dictating and faster.
The short answer is that this is a question for Dragon support. We do not do anything to enable Dragon on either platform – nor have they published instructions that would help us do so – so there’s nothing for us to “fix” in the event it misbehaves.
Sadly, you have run into one of the issues around the back-end of cloud-based services. Specifically the changes that cloud-based models brought to market.
Very few companies still offer offline pay-once solutions. Subscription models require frequent and recurring validation, and so since your already online for that… It’s easier on their end to just send the voice files to the home server, transcribe it, and send the text back. For this we will not go into what other things they might do with your voice while they have it.
Dragon offered an iOS app once-upon-a-time and I played with it then, but it was a crapshoot based on my my use case at the time. It did mark a shift in Dragon’s market outlook. They dropped support for everyday users and restricted further development to power users with deep pockets.
How deep? Version 16 is current and can be found in three flavors. “Professional” at $699 (marked down to $649), “Legal” at $799 (marked down to $749) and “Medical” at $1600 (marked down to $1400). All prices quoted from dragon(dash)store(dot)org(slash)shop on 28 February 2025 (Yes, I deliberately did not make that a hyperlink).
I’m not sure on a quality local-only replacement for Dragon. MacOS and Windows both leverage their digital assistance technologies to let you dictate text, but I’m not aware of any of those services that works without phoning home.
What I wish I had a modern version of is Dragon circa 2004. It saved the audio files and cross linked that with the text so when you saw a syllabauble you coud have it play back what you said. That functionally was lost when Microsoft released their Windows Vista internal dictation engine that worked almost exactly the same way, but without saving the wav files after you closed the program. In 2008 I dictated my NaNoWriMo manuscribe during my first year trucking. There were large sections of text that looked like so many monkeys banging on keyboards, only the words were properly spelled words, context be damned. I think after Microsoft stole their thunder with a “free with vista” feature, they migrated to not wanting to support the odd hobbyist.
An added wrinkle to all this is that Dragon Systems–the folks that developed Dragon Naturally Speaking–were bought out by ScanSoft in 2005, who then bought Nuance Communications and rebranded the merged companies as Nuance.
Microsoft acquired Nuance in March 2022, and they dropped the Mac version of Dragon right around that point. It’s been Microsoft guiding Dragon’s push to the legal/physician market since then…
Speech productivity 7 was an add on to use with Dragon that improved the dictation box. i really like it in conjunction with Dragon as all the dragon commands work in it, unlike directly dictating inside Scrivener where not all dragon commands work.
kinda sucks that when I decided to buy, I go the website and find out it has been discontinued…LOL oh well.
Doesn’t seem to be anythign out there to replace it. I LOVE Dragon as so far, it is almost 100% accurate with my vocal patterns. It is so rare to actually get the wrong word as to be inconsequential.
so needless to say…very much not looking for other dictation alternatives.
There are other options out there that don’t require an active internet connection. A quick googling around found this solution basked on Python and Vosk.
I haven’t tried myself, and I’m not where I can, but from all of the hoopla it works, maybe not as brilliantly as the old Dragon did, but perhaps without two hours of reciting training text before you could use it.
Technology has advanced significantly since Dragon first appeared on the scene. Mac OS/Siri has decent speech recognition right out of the box. It wouldn’t hurt to see what’s available in the Windows world.
I have been using Scrivener with Dragon Professional Individual 15 for several years.
No issues here, although I have never experienced the kind of accuracy with Dragon that it sounds like you experience, OP (and I have used several different versions of Dragon over the years).
There is a tweak that I had to search for, though, and apply, in order to prevent the Dictation Box popping up every time I tried to dictate.
Once I had applied the feature, I was able to dictate directly in to Dragon.
I attribute much of the accuracy I enjoy with dragon to the fact that I was in radio for several years and am currently a voice actor , so I have a very clear and crisp manner of speaking.
to be honest, the average person doesn’t realize how bad they actually sound when trying to record something. Numerous Youtube videos have left me cringing. Before I started radio, I thought I sounded awesome. going back and listening to early recordings of mine make me cringe. LOL
so as it stands right now…I dictate into Libre Office, then cut and paste and fix everything manually.
Many years ago (and a few years apart) I produced (and sometimes co-presented) a couple of radio series, but I have been writing and recording songs for even longer than that, and also used to teach and present workshops (which were being videotaped) - so I hear what you are saying about clear diction.
My microphone technique is also very good, regarding minimising plosives, avoiding the proximity effect, and so on.
For me, the lack of consistent, mistake-free dictation into Scrivener is, I think, due to a couple of factors. One is that all of the contexts in which I ‘write’ (use dictation) had professional (or other) jargon that Dragon is inconsistent with (even if I have ‘taught’ Dragon the word), and there are always other jargon words or phrases that I have not used previously, and which I have to go back and correct.
The other issue seems to be a computer one - even though I have used Dragon on multiple computers over the years (some of them brand new, fairly state-of-the-art in terms of technology), there always seems to be a point at which the computer begins to deteriorate in terms of handling dictation. And at the point, clearing the cache always improves things.
Another thing I have found helpful is to start a new profile every few months.
Dictating straight into the Dictation Box seems to be a very good thing to do - but I never do that because I can not be bothered to copy and paste into Word (or whatever application is the final destination for the text).
Dictating into Word and Scrivener generally work fairly well for me (pace the comments I made above).