Dictation Sessions

Dictation sessions are for the times when you want Confer to stay with you while you work. The session keeps listening, detects when a thought is finished, processes that spoken segment, and types the result into the app you are using.

Use sessions for chat tools, agent prompts, email replies, notes, and any workflow where you want to speak in several passes without starting a new recording each time.

Start and end a session

Press Option + D to start a session. Press Option + D again when you are done. Confer finishes the segment you were speaking, types it in, and then ends the session. You can also end it by choosing Stop Session from the Confer menu bar icon.

Esc does not end a session, so you can keep using it in other apps while you talk.

What you see

With edge glow on, which is the default, a soft light along the bottom of your screen shows that the session is listening. It dims while the session is paused and shows when a segment is processing.

With edge glow off, Confer shows a compact session panel at the bottom of the screen instead. Hover over it, or start speaking, to expand it and see the selected prompt, the elapsed time, and a waveform. The elapsed time only counts while the session is listening, not while it is paused. To move the panel, press and hold the timer and drag. Double click the timer to move the panel back.

How it works

Confer listens for speech on your Mac and finishes a segment after about one second of silence. Each segment is transcribed, classified, processed with the selected prompt, has your dictionary replacements applied, and is typed into the app that was in front when you started speaking. The text appears in the field as you speak and is refined in place until the segment is final.

Even with No Prompt selected, each segment is cleaned up for punctuation, capitalization, grammar, and filler words.

The session stays active after each segment, so you can keep speaking in a natural rhythm. Confer also keeps a fraction of a second of audio from before you start talking, so your first words aren't cut off.

Text is not typed in when Intelligent paste is off in Settings, or when the current app has Prevent Auto Pasting turned on. The segments are still saved to the session.

Speech routing

Not everything a microphone hears is meant to be pasted. Before processing a segment, Confer classifies it:

• Dictation and instructions are processed and pasted.
• Corrections such as "change token to session token" are applied to what you said.
• Commands directed at Confer are carried out and never pasted.
• Ambient conversation and noise, such as someone talking nearby or an unrelated side topic, are discarded.

Discarded segments are not pasted, not saved, and not used in the session summary.

Voice commands

You can control a session by voice:

• Say "pause" or "pause the session" to pause. If the pause request comes after useful speech, that speech is still processed first.
• Say "scratch that", "never mind", or "cancel that" to discard the current segment, including anything you said before it.

Automatic pause

If you stop talking for about five seconds, the session pauses itself and the timer stops. As soon as you start speaking again, it picks back up on its own.

Pause and resume

Press Option + P, or choose Pause Session from the menu bar, when you need a break but do not want to end the session. While paused, Confer stops listening and clears the current audio buffer. If you pause in the middle of a thought, Confer holds onto what you said as a paused draft and continues it when you resume.

You can also have a session pause automatically whenever a specific app comes to the front, such as a video call app. Turn on Auto-pause Dictation Sessions for that app in the Apps view. The session resumes when you leave the app.

Session settings

Press Option + I during a session, or choose Session Settings from the menu bar, to open the Dictation Session window. Here you can:

• Rename the session.
• Switch the microphone.
• Turn on Press Return after each Dictation Session transcription.

Prompts and app defaults

Sessions start with No Prompt unless the app in front has a default session prompt. To switch prompts during a session, press Option + Up and Option + Down, use the prompt menu in the session panel, or choose one from Session Prompt in the menu bar. Prompts can be switched while the session is listening or paused, but not while a segment is processing.

If you set a session default for an app, Confer uses it while you are working in that app. When you move into another configured app during a session, Confer updates the selected prompt to match. This is useful when Mail needs an email prompt, an editor needs Markdown, and an agent tool needs a task prompt.

Send each result

Turn on Submit after each transcription in Settings, or the matching toggle in the Dictation Session window, to have Confer press Return after it types each finished segment.

This is useful in chat based tools where each completed thought should be sent right away. Leave it off when you want to review or keep editing before you send.

Resume a session

To pick up where you left off, press Option + Shift + D when you aren't recording. Confer reopens your most recent session, and new segments are added to it. You can also open any session in the Dictation Sessions view and click Pick up.

Session history and summaries

Every session is saved in the Dictation Sessions view of the main window. New sessions are named with the date and time they started, and you can rename them at any time.

When a session ends, Confer generates a short headline and summary of what it covered so you can find it again later. Opening a session that has new transcriptions also refreshes its summary. Sessions and summaries are stored on your Mac.

Find sessions

Search with Cmd + F to look through session titles and everything said in them. You can also filter by date, status (in progress or completed), prompt, and app. Sessions can be sorted by most recently updated, oldest updated, title, duration, or number of transcriptions.

Session details

Selecting a session shows its duration, how many transcriptions it has, and a timeline of everything you said, with its own search. Click any transcription to see its details, copy it, reprocess it with another prompt, or delete it.

Delete sessions

Right click a session and choose Delete, or click Select to delete several at once. Confer asks whether to delete only the session, which keeps its transcriptions in the Transcriptions view, or to delete the session and all of its transcriptions.