{"id":9450,"date":"2026-06-05T11:08:05","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T15:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tcn.tidbits.com\/?p=11605"},"modified":"2026-08-08T17:39:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T21:39:47","slug":"use-fake-contacts-to-improve-dictation-accuracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/use-fake-contacts-to-improve-dictation-accuracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Use Fake Contacts to Improve Dictation Accuracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Apple\u2019s<a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/guide\/iphone\/dictate-text-iph2c0651d2\/ios\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> Dictation<\/a> feature is a great way to avoid slow typing on the iPhone and iPad, and it can be welcome on the Mac as well. But it struggles with proper nouns\u2014it guesses wildly at unfamiliar names and often fails to capitalize common words that are part of a name (so you get \u201cNew York Public library\u201d). Apple doesn\u2019t provide a user-editable dictionary, but there\u2019s a backdoor solution: create entries in Contacts. When you create a fake contact for a troublesome word or phrase, Dictation learns to recognize it correctly across all your Apple devices. Put the word or phrase in the First Name field and add an emoji like \ud83d\ude49 in the Last Name field so these fake contacts sort to the bottom of your Contacts list and don\u2019t clutter the display. For stubborn words, you may need to train Dictation by dictating a few practice sentences in Notes and correcting mistakes when iOS offers alternatives. This trick works for place names, organization names, technical terms, or any word that Dictation consistently gets wrong.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-11603\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/use-fake-contacts-to-improve-dictation-accuracy-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"320\" height=\"654\" \/><\/p>\n<p>(Featured image by iStock.com\/Jacob Wackerhausen)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apple\u2019s Dictation feature is a great way to avoid slow typing on the iPhone and iPad, and it can be welcome on the Mac as well. But it struggles with proper nouns\u2014it guesses wildly at unfamiliar names and often fails to capitalize common words that are part of a name (so you get \u201cNew York [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,69,106,880,8,25,112,185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-apple","category-apple-consulting-ct","category-apple-support-ct","category-ipad","category-iphone","category-mac","category-mac-support-ct","category-mactech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9508,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9450\/revisions\/9508"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}