I have been using the MacOS dictation tool within Scrivener and it works well while it’s working. But I can only get about half an hour before it starts kicking out black squares with question marks in them instead of characters. The only solution I have discovered is rebooting the laptop and starting again, Does anyone have a solution to this?
Have you confirmed whether this happens specifically with Scrivener? You could try using a TextEdit window for a longer session, with the intention of copying and pasting the results into Scrivener when you’re done. If that breaks down as well then you should broaden your search beyond Scrivener specifically. I’d probably do that anyway as a first step.
It would be a little strange for this system tool to only break in one program. But do use Mac software for testing, not Word or Chrome or anything like that. TextEdit is a good choice because its text editor is very close to Scrivener’s. I would strongly recommend turning Wrap to Page on, in the Format menu, as this will force it to use the exact same text engine Scrivener uses. The only differences then will be the stuff we’ve added.
1 Like
Hi -
Thanks for that. I just tried it with TextEdit and had no problem, but I will try again as maybe it was a fluke.
I did find this:
”The “Question Mark” Issue
The black boxes/question marks often signal a timing error where Scrivener’s text elements aren’t syncing correctly with macOS’s speech recognition, especially after system updates. A restart or Safe Mode reboot usually fixes this by re-initializing the components.”
So I will try a safe mode reboot.
1 Like