How Recording Works

Confer has three ways to dictate: quick dictation, anchored dictation, and dictation sessions. Each is designed for a different kind of workflow, so you can choose the one that best fits the task at hand.

Quick dictation

Quick dictation is a press and hold experience. Press and hold the fn key, speak, and release the key when you are done.

While you hold the key, Confer streams your audio to the transcription service and starts processing it with your prompt in the background. Whenever you pause, Confer gets a head start on the final result, so it's ready soon after you release. When you release, the finished result is pasted into the focused field in one write. Nothing is written to the field until the result is final, so you never see partial text being corrected in front of you.

Quick dictation uses your default dictation prompt, which you can set in Settings or per app in the Apps view. To pick a prompt while you talk, use anchored dictation instead.

Anchored dictation

Anchored dictation works like quick dictation, but you don't have to hold a key. Press Option + Space to start, speak, and press Option + Space again to finish. The result is pasted in one write, just like quick dictation.

While anchored dictation is recording, a prompt pill appears just above the recording indicator, with a microphone button beside it:

• Prompt pill. Shows the selected prompt. Click it to choose another, or press Option + Up and Option + Down to switch without using your cursor. Pinned prompts are listed first.
• Microphone button. Choose which microphone to use. The change applies from your next dictation.

These controls never take focus away from the app you are typing in.

Edge glow and the recording panel

By default, Confer shows a soft light along the bottom edge of your screen while you dictate, with a small waveform at the bottom center. The glow responds to your microphone level, shows a loading sweep while the result is processing, and fades away when the result is pasted. It appears on the display you are working on.

If you turn edge glow off in Settings under Audio, Confer shows a compact recording panel at the bottom center of the screen instead.

To hide the glow and panel for dictation entirely, turn off Show Dictation visuals in Settings under Audio.

Prompts

Prompts post-process your transcription, for example turning it into an email or Markdown. By default the No Prompt option is selected. You can change which prompt is used in two places:

• Settings. The Dictation prompt setting under App is the default for quick and anchored dictation.
• Apps. A default prompt for a specific app overrides the Settings default while you are in that app.

Even with No Prompt, Confer cleans up capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and filler words. If that cleanup takes longer than a few seconds, Confer pastes your words as spoken so you are never left waiting.

10 premade prompts are available in Confer, but you may add your own, modify the existing ones, or delete them as you see fit.

Cancel dictation

To cancel quick or anchored dictation, press Esc while recording or processing. The recording is discarded and nothing is pasted. Confer doesn't block the key, so the app you are in also receives the Esc press.

A single dictation can be up to 5 minutes long.

When something goes wrong

If a dictation fails, the error appears right in the recording panel. When the recording was saved, the panel offers Go to transcription, which opens it in the Transcriptions view, where you can retry it. Otherwise, click Dismiss or press Esc.

Failed recordings keep their audio for 24 hours so you can retry them. Recordings with no speech detected are not saved.

Dictation sessions

Dictation sessions keep listening and turn each finished thought into text while the session stays open. Press Option + D to start one. Confer finishes a spoken segment when you pause, processes it, and types the result into the app you are using.

Use a session when you are working in chat tools, writing several notes, prompting an agent, or talking through a task in several passes. Press Option + P to pause and resume, and Option + D again to end the session.

Paste behavior

When a result is ready, Confer pastes it into the field you are typing in. Confer keeps the result in the review panel instead when:

• Intelligent paste is turned off in Settings under App.
• The app you are in has Prevent Auto Pasting turned on in the Apps view.
• No text field is focused.

Review panel

The review panel anchors itself to the bottom of your screen. From here you can:

• Choose a different prompt and click Re-run to process the transcription again.
• Edit the text directly.
• Click Paste, or press Cmd + Return, to paste into the frontmost app.

To close the panel without pasting, click the close button at the top center or press Esc.