Hold or tap: one dictation key, two ways to talk

Until now dictation had two separate parts: a key you hold, and the secretary, which listens continuously. The secretary had its own key, its own menu item and its own tab in Settings. We merged them. There is one dictation key, and how you press it decides what happens.

How it works

Hold the key and talk. When you let go, the whole text lands in the field at once. This is the instant way. It can restyle the text with a style preset, and there is no time limit.

Tap the key briefly and the secretary starts. Talk as long as you like. The text appears in the field piece by piece as you speak, and a second tap stops it. If translation is on, each piece is translated as it goes. The secretary does not restyle the text.

The line between the two is half a second. A press shorter than that is a tap. A press longer than that is a hold. You do not choose a mode beforehand, you just press the key the way the moment calls for.

Why we did it

Two keys for one job made people stop and think which one to use. A phrase for a chat message wants the hold. A long thought, a letter or a stream of notes wants the tap. That is a difference in how you press, not a different feature, so it should not be a different place in the app.

The secretary used to be a limited feature, with time limits of 60 seconds and 15 minutes. Both limits are gone, and the secretary is now free, like the rest of dictation. The separate key, the menu item, the Settings tab, the history view and the battery indicator are removed.

Long holds are styled in parts

A related change for the instant way. When you hold the key for a long time and a style preset is on, the text used to go to the style model in one piece. A long text is hard for a small local model. Now the app cuts a long dictation into parts and styles each part with its own budget. If styling one part fails, only that part stays as you said it, and the rest is still styled. Spacing between the parts is kept.

What to do after updating

Nothing. Your dictation key stays where it was. Hold it for a phrase, tap it for the secretary. The details are on the hotkeys page.