In my previous post I have shared the trick to activate Siri by saying “hey” to the Mac. The Dictation built in Mac OS X allows users to speak to type text and control a series of operations. Today I would like to tell you a little more about the Dictation.

Some users may have enabled it along with the Enhanced Dictation feature, and consequently some enhanced dictation files were downloaded on their Macs, which for sure take up valuable disk space. If you do not use this feature and want to release those occupied disk space, then you can delete those large files stored on your Mac.

Turn off Enhanced Dictation Feature:

To remove downloaded enhanced dictation files on your Mac, you will have to turn off the Dictation feature first. Here is how to do: go to the System Preferences from the Apple Menu; click on the Dictation & Speech icon in the system settings panel; click on the Off next to the Dictation in the Dictation tab.

Locate & Delete Enhanced Dictation Files:

Don’t know how to find the offline language files? They are located deep down in the system folder on your Mac, and you can use the Finder to locate and delete them.

• Open the Finder, click on the “Go” menu on the top bar, and select the “Go to` Folder…” option. Or you can hit Command+Shift+G keys to access the “Go” function.
• Type the following path into the box, and click on the Go button to open the folder:
  /System/Library/Speech/Recognizers/SpeechRecognitionCoreLanguages

• As the directory opens, hit Command + A to select all the language folders inside.
• Right click on them and choose the “Move to Trash” option. To delete them from your system, right click on the Trash icon on the dock and choose “Empty Trash”.

Now you should have reclaimed the storage space the downloaded files occupied. But notice that those enhanced dictation files will be removed for other users on your Mac, so you might need to back up the data beforehand. Of course you can always download the files again by re-enabling the Enhanced Dictation feature.

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