The Power of the Grid

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/mac-help/mh40719/mac

I certainly am going to talk about a few areas that I want to address in the next two or three episodes, but right now I'm gonna state the obvious–the best way to learn voice control is to use it.

Use the Apple support page that I previously mentioned, and if necessary, go over and over and over the commands and what they mean, until it almost becomes automatic. Stick with it, and eventually you will come to the day when you can speak to the Mac, and get things done faster and more efficiently than you could ever do using the mouse and keyboard. I know that I thought voice control would be a cool thing to use it at first but eventually lost interest. However when my hands started screaming in pain from the years of wear and tear - and it could very well happen to you - I found that I viewed voice control not as something interesting, but as a necessity.

Having said that, I want to specifically address what I think is one of the most useful characteristics of voice control - and that is the use of grids.

Transcript

Speaker 0:09

Hello, welcome back to Celebrate Creativity, and this episode is called The Power of the Grid.

Speaker 0:19

After an extremely well-needed rest from using the mouse and keyboard, I would like to conclude the overall section regarding voice control in the next two or three episodes. Then I would like to begin an extremely ambitious podcast series called The Hall of Imagination, a series set in a wax museum where the figures of history have stories to tell. And initially, I am limiting myself to three episodes a week. Hopefully that can increase to more episodes as I become more proficient with voice control and have less pain in my arm. Now the reality is that there are not that many resources out there about how to practically use it to control your Macintosh, and I'm referring to voice control. And the ones that are out there are often fast, flashy, and not all that helpful. You often get the feeling that the person who has made the video that is supposed to teach you is really just showing off. And to make things worse, voice control commands often differ according to the system you're using. But don't despair. There's an excellent resource out there, and it's not a flashy video, but text where you can take your time and actually learn the various commands. That resource is Apple Support for Voice Control. I have put the complete URL at the top of the show notes for this episode and suggest that you really digest the information so that you can make voice control a part of your workflow. Take your time and go over it and over it and over it regarding this information. It is well worth the effort. And you can pretty well be guaranteed that the Apple support information will definitely match the system that you're using. And again, that URL is at the top of the show notes for this episode. Now I'm going to talk about a few areas that I want to address in the next two or three episodes, but right now I'm going to state the obvious. The best way to learn voice control is simply to use it. Use the Apple support page that I previously mentioned, and if necessary, go over and over and over the commands and what they mean until it almost becomes automatic. Stick with it, and eventually you will come to the day where you can speak to the Mac and get things done faster and more efficiently than you could have ever done using the mouse and keyboard. I know that I once thought using voice control would be a cold thing to use at first, but eventually lost interest. However, when my hands started screaming in pain from the years of overuse of wear and tear, and a similar thing could very well happen to you, I found that I viewed voice control not as something interesting or a novelty, but as a necessity. Having said that, I want to specifically address what I think is one of the most useful characteristics of voice control, and that is its use of grids. Well, your first question might be: well, what in the heck is a grid? Well, grids are a powerful accessibility feature within Macintosh voice control that allow you to interact with parts of the screen that don't have traditional button names or menu labels. Think of it as a way to point and click using only your voice by overlaying a coordinate system on your display. Let me go into that a little bit further. When you give the command show grid, a numbered 3x3 grid appears over the entire screen. This allows you to narrow down your focus through a process of elimination. Now stay with me on this. For example, after saying show grid, you might say a number. For example, 5 to zoom into that specific square. The grid then subdivides that square into another 3x3 grid with new numbers. You can keep repeating numbers to get more and more precise. And this will make a lot more sense when you try this yourself. Now once the center of the grid is over the item that you want to interact with, you can give an action command like click that, double click, or right click. And try to remember after you've said show grid, then just say the number that you're interested in and keep drilling down if necessary and say click such and such a number. This may sound confusing at first, but keep trying it yourself, and I think it'll it all become second nature. Let me give you some of the commands that are related to grid control. Show grid. That's the command, show grid, and the action is that it displays the initial numbered grid. Hide grid removes the grid from the screen. Show grid for such and such an application limits the grid only to the window of a specific application. Click number directly clicks the center of a specific numbered square without zooming in first. Drill down specific number. Zooms into a specific area to see more detail. Well, this might sound a bit confusing, and you might be asking, well, why use grids in the first place? You see, while voice control is excellent at identifying buttons, for example, click send or click enter, it struggles with websites with unlabeled images. If an image is a link but has no text, the grid lets you click it. An example would be creative software, where you have precise movements in photo editors or timeline scrubbing in video software. Complex maps, where you might click a specific street or landmark that doesn't have a distinct element. And let me say here that if the grid feels too cluttered, you can go to system settings, accessibility, voice control, to adjust the grid's density or transparency. Now remember, while voice control is great at clicking things it can see, such as a send button, it sometimes gets stuck on things that don't have a name, like a specific spot on a map, an unlabeled photo, or a slider in a music app. That's where the grid comes in. It's the what you might call fail safe method that ensures no part of the screen is off limits. An analogy might be the game battleship. Hope this helps a little bit. You see, when you say show grid, you're essentially laying a three by three numbered sheet over your Mac. Instead of say A-4, you just say a number, one through nine. The magic happens when you drill down. If you say five, and remember just five, the Mac zooms into the center square and lays another three by three grid inside it. You keep doing this until you are hovering over a single pixel. That's a you can go that far down. Now, some of the actions in drilling down on a grid might take a second or two longer. The first time that I was drilling down with grids, I was thinking, oh, what am I doing wrong? Nothing is happening. But you should just wait a second or two because this all takes a great deal of computation on the part of your machine. And remember, at its most basic, you say show grid, see the numbers, say see or say the number over top of the item you want, show numbers, sorry, you say show numbers if you want to drill down and see something smaller, and then finally, when you don't want to go any further, say click and the name of the number to find the item you want. Remember, while voice control is excellent at identifying buttons, uh, for example, click send or enter, it struggles with websites with unlabeled images. If an image is a link but has no text, the grid lets you click it. Or creative software, precise movements in photo editors or timeline scrubbing in video software are very good examples. And then another example would be complex maps, where you click a specific street or landmark that doesn't have a distinct interface element. Let me go over that one more time. Remember that you can make it easier to interact with a precise area of the screen by superimposing a grid on top of it. Using voice control, say, for example, show grid. This will display a grid over the active window. And here you say show window grid. Each cell in the grid that pops up is labeled with a number. The voice control icon is located in the menu bar. Now to interact with the location on the grid, say if a number is at the location that you want to interact with, say any command, such as click, followed by the grid number. The grid disappears after you say the command. You can drill down on an area of the grid. If you need to further refine the location, say a grid number to show a more detailed grid in that area. And you can drill down multiple times. And when an area can't be drilled into further, the numbers are no longer framed, and saying a number performs the click command. Now let me give you a little tip here. When item names, numbers, or a numbered grid are shown, you can drag and drop an item using the names or numbers of the item and drop location. Let me say that again. When item names, numbers, or a numbered grid are shown, you can drag and drop an item using the names or numbers of the item and the drop location. For example, say drag item name or number to location name or number. Although in such a case I think it's safer to use numbers. Say hide grid to turn the overlay off. Now I think this is the most important thing to remember regarding voice control. If you have problems with voice control, say remembering a command or a series of commands or something's acting the way that you just don't understand, and this will definitely happen to you, my advice is to go to ChatGPT and explain the situation. Say how you use grids or numbers with voice control, and the more specific you are, the better answer you will get. And at the end of your comments or what you put into the voice box, say enter that. Remember, not enter that, but enter that. With emphasis on the T-H-A-T. Enter that. I still make that mistake all the time. Theoretically, Chat GPT is trained on billions of gigabytes of information, more than you and I could possibly read in a several lifetimes. And I can honestly say that without ChatGPT, I would not have known the concepts that I needed to use when I was dealing with voice control. Now let me end this podcast episode by pointing out that using a grid is especially important when using voice control with a web page. For example, if I've ordered something from Amazon and I want to see if it's come in, I open my web browser that has buttons leading to the main sites that I use. And I do this by saying open Google Chrome in my case. When the pages come up, I then say show grid, and a grid is just digitally placed over the page. I then say the number of the grid over top of the icon for Amazon. Then when I know it's completely over Amazon and will not go to any other place, I say 22 or whatever number is beneath the Amazon icon. This will take me to the main Amazon page and I say show grid. I then say sh uh say the number below returns and orders. And if necessary, I say show grid again. And finally the number under that grid. Then to find out information about the item I am interested in, I might need to say scroll down to make it visible. Now I know this sounds it might sound really confusing to you now, but when you get into it and start doing this, it will make a lot more sense. And in doing this, I I might say either show numbers or show grid. This will take me to information about that item, and I say click view, and the view menu will come down. Now we're talking about the menu bar here. This is a well, there's a five beside. Reload this page. So when I say five, the line graph will show the progress of the delivery, assuming that it's not arrived yet. Again, I know this sounds a little bit complicated, but in reality it just takes a few seconds, and you don't even have to touch the computer once you've learned it.

Speaker 17:10

Now join Celebrate Creativity for the next episode, which I hope to have out in two or three days, in which I discuss how to use voice control with YouTube as well as Garage Band, where the rules about what you can and cannot do are somewhat different because in both applications you're dealing with sound. Thank you for listening to Celebrate Creativity.