Hotkeys

What has a hotkey

• Plain dictation — your language in, the same language out. Free.
• Dictation with translation — you speak yours, English lands in the field.
• Secretary — keeps adding to the same field for as long as you talk.
• Voice prompt — say what to do with the text, not just what to write.
• Record meeting — starts and ends a recording.
• Subtitles — turns live subtitles on and off.
• Translate under the cursor — translates the sentence you are pointing at.
• Paste the last one — puts the previous result in again.

Where to see and change them

The menu bar shows the current combination next to each action, so the menu is always the truth.

Changing them is spread across four tabs of Settings, by what the action belongs to: Dictation holds plain dictation, dictation with translation, the voice prompt and paste-the-last-one; Secretary holds the secretary; Subtitles holds subtitles and meeting recording; Translation holds translate-under-the-cursor.

Hold, do not press

Dictation hotkeys work while held: hold, speak, release. That is deliberate — it means there is no “recording” state you can leave running by accident.

When a hotkey does nothing

Another app took it. macOS gives a combination to whoever registered it first. Try a different one in Settings before assuming the app is broken.

A permission is missing. Typing into another app’s field needs Accessibility. If it is not granted, the speech is recognised and has nowhere to go. The menu bar shows a warning when this is the case.

The feature is paid and not unlocked. The dictation panel says so rather than doing nothing silently — see Account and plans.