Hands-free phone calls with Skype and MacSpeech Dictate

If you use Skype and MacSpeech Dictate I’ve found a way to make hands-free phone calls with a little help from AppleScript.

MacSpeech Dictate has a built in AppleScript editor. To use it click on the “Tools” menu and select “Commands”. Make sure you set the type of command you want to create to “Globals” on the left-hand side of the window that has the “+” button to create a new command. Then click on the “Type” drop-down menu and select “AppleScript”. Then give your command (where it says “Command”) a name like “call mom” for example. This is what you’ll actually say to activate the command. You can write a description of what the command is supposed to do in the “Description” field. Finally, you need to put the AppleScript code down in the “Source” field. And here is the code you will need to use.

tell application "Skype"
	send command "CALL +12125555555" script name "My Script"
end tell

The easiest thing to do is just cut and paste the AppleScript above into the “Source” field. Where it says “CALL +12125555555″ simply change the number to whatever phone number you want the command to call. Any number must be preceded by +1 in the United States (Then the area code and number just like above). When finished hit the “Compile” button.

You can create as many commands as you like. One for all your friends and every member of your family and it works quite well! But there is one issue. The AppleScript is supposed to launch Skype and make the call to whatever person you specified. However, once Skype opens a dialog window pops up asking for permission to use an AppleScript with Skype. Even though you can select “Always Allow” that window still pops up every time you make an AppleScript initiated call. Obviously that kind of defeats the purpose of making a completely hands-free phone call and I haven’t figured out how to disable that dialog box. However, if you simply leave Skype running in the background (like most people do anyways) that dialog window won’t pop up when you make an AppleScript-initiated call.

So with Skype running in the background simply leave MacSpeech Dictate in “Sleep” mode then when you’re anywhere in the vicinity of your computer simply say “wake up” to activate MacSpeech Dictate then say one of your AppleScript calling commands (like “call mom”) to initiate a call to somebody. It’s that simple!

- Paul Natsch

[Ed:

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