Keyboard shortcuts

The defaults

VoiceSnap Pro ships with five shortcuts. Only the first one matters on day one; the rest are there when you want them.

• Dictate (push-to-talk) — hold Right Option on macOS, hold Right Alt on Windows.
• Dictate (toggle) — Control + Option + D on macOS, Ctrl + Alt + D on Windows.
• Cancel the dictation in progress — Escape, on both platforms.
• Open the notes library — Control + Option + L, Ctrl + Alt + L.
• Insert the previous dictation again — Control + Option + V, Ctrl + Alt + V.

Push-to-talk, in detail

Hold the key, speak, release. Recording starts on key-down and stops on key-up, and the text is inserted after you release. A dictation shorter than about a quarter of a second is discarded as a mis-tap, so brushing the key while typing costs you nothing.

Push-to-talk holds the mic open only while you are pressing, which is what makes it safe in a shared office and in a meeting. It is also the mode that keeps you honest about the target app: the field that had focus when you pressed the key is the field that gets the text.

Toggle mode, in detail

Press once to start, speak, press again to stop. Nothing is inserted until you stop, so you can think, pause, and keep going without producing three separate blobs of text.

Toggle mode adds two safeguards, both in Settings → Shortcuts. A visible recording indicator stays on the mic pill for the whole session, and an auto-stop ends the dictation after a stretch of silence you choose, so a session you forgot about does not run all afternoon.

• Escape cancels a toggle session and throws the audio away — nothing is typed and nothing is saved.
• Clicking into a different app during a toggle session does not move the target. The text still goes to the app that had focus at the start.
• The auto-stop timer is off by default and can be set from 5 seconds to 2 minutes of silence.

Changing a shortcut

Open Settings → Shortcuts, click the field next to the action, and press the combination you want. Press Escape to abandon the change and leave the old binding alone.

VoiceSnap Pro accepts a bare modifier key (Right Option, Right Command, Right Alt, Right Ctrl) as a push-to-talk binding — that is unusual and deliberate, because holding a single key is easier than holding three. Toggle bindings need at least one modifier plus a regular key, so a stray keypress can never start a recording.

Picking a combination that will not collide

A global shortcut has to survive every app you use. These are the ones that reliably cause trouble, and what to use instead.

• Fn / Globe on macOS — already owned by Apple's own dictation and the emoji picker. Avoid.
• Alt + Space on Windows — opens the window system menu in almost every desktop app.
• Ctrl + Space — claimed by input method editors for Chinese, Japanese and Korean, and by autocomplete in several IDEs.
• ⌘ + Space and ⌘ + Option + Space — Spotlight and Finder search.
• Anything with a plain letter and one modifier — some app, somewhere, will want it. Two modifiers plus a letter is the safe shape.
• If you use a right-handed mouse, keep the dictation key on the left half of the keyboard so you can hold it and still click.

Cancelling, undoing and re-inserting

Escape during a dictation cancels it: the audio is dropped, nothing is typed, nothing is saved. That is the fastest fix when you realise you are pointed at the wrong window.

After the text has been inserted, your app's own undo (⌘ Z / Ctrl + Z) removes it. Depending on the app that may take one press or several, because VoiceSnap Pro inserts text the same way a keyboard does. Control + Option + V re-inserts the previous dictation into the current field, which is how you recover from an app that swallowed it.

When a shortcut needs more than a binding

A global shortcut is a system-level privilege on both platforms, so a correct binding can still do nothing until the OS agrees.

• macOS: Input Monitoring must be granted, or the shortcut only works while VoiceSnap Pro itself is the focused app.
• macOS: after granting Accessibility or Input Monitoring, quit and reopen VoiceSnap Pro.
• Windows: an app running as administrator ignores input from a non-elevated app. To dictate into an elevated window, run VoiceSnap Pro as administrator too.
• Both: full-screen games and remote-desktop clients that capture raw input can swallow the shortcut. Windowed mode gives it back.