Dictation

Put your cursor wherever you want text — an email, a document, a chat, a form in a filtered browser. Hold F7, speak naturally, and release. The words are typed at your cursor as one paste, so a single Ctrl+Z removes the whole dictation if you change your mind.

The microphone is kept warm, so the start of your first word is never clipped. A floating pill near the taskbar shows the recording level, a timer, and — on longer dictations — the text as it is being recognized.

While holding the key, tap Space — recording locks on and you can let go. Dictate a whole letter; tap F7 again when you are done.

Long dictations are recognized in the background at natural pauses while you are still speaking, so when you finish there is only a short tail left to process — the text appears almost immediately.

Prefer a plain on/off key? Settings → Keys → Mode switches from Hold to Toggle.

Each dictation is listened to as a whole and routed to the right language automatically: a Yiddish sentence comes out in Hebrew letters, an English one in English. You never pick a language, and one dictation never comes out half and half.

When you know what you are about to say, you can force it for that one dictation: hold F7 and tap E for English or Y for Yiddish. A small toast confirms which language is on.

Settings → Language → My words is a plain list, one entry per line: names, places, the terms of your trade. The recognizer favors them, in dictation and in file transcription alike. Add the people you write to most and their names stop coming out creatively spelled.

Almost every program accepts the pasted text. For the rare one that blocks pasting, Settings → Output → Insertion method offers Type character-by-character instead. There is also a switch for a trailing space after each dictation, and one to hide the floating pill if you find it distracting.

Your clipboard is not touched: whatever you had copied before is restored after the dictation lands — text, formatted text, images or files.

Settings → Microphone lets you pick the input device and run a quick level test with a live meter. Do this once when you set up, and again if you plug in a new headset. Instant capture (the warm mic) can be Always ready, on for a few minutes after each dictation, or off.

The Home screen keeps a short list of your recent dictations so you can copy one again if a program swallowed it. Clear it whenever you like — it is stored on this computer only.