Bottom Line: On OSX or iOS, use dictation to “type” in long strings of numbers.

I hate manually typing in long strings of numbers (e.g. serial numbers, credit card numbers), since I always end up constantly looking back and forth between the number and my screen to make sure I’m getting it right.

Ends up Apple’s dictation works pretty darn well for this. Just turn on dictation and start reading the number. On OSX (at least if you use Enhanced Dictation), it will initially show words instead of numbers one two three four five, but after an instant replace them with the numbers 12345. It even seems to recognize letters in the mix, e.g. I just dictated 456TY892. Works fine on iOS as well.

For better or worse, it will assume that seven or ten digit numbers are phone numbers and format then as such with hyphens.