Dictation Pro

Quick Note puts a spoken sentence into your notes. Dictation puts it into whatever you were already typing in: hold a hotkey, say the thing, let go, and the words appear at the cursor in the app that had focus, a Slack message, a Mail draft, a terminal, a browser form. Nothing has to be open in Oris, and Oris does the transcription on your Mac the same way it does for quick notes and meetings.

Dictation is part of Oris Pro, free in beta. It has a section of its own, Dictation, and it is off until you switch it on there. It needs Enable quick notes on as well (on the Quick Notes section), because dictation is a second use of the same capture that quick notes run on; the Dictation section is greyed out until it is. Until Pro is on, the switch is locked behind its Pro badge, and pressing the hotkey shows “Dictation is a Pro feature.” rather than starting a capture.

Turning it on

1. On the Quick Notes section, check that Enable quick notes is on.
2. On the Dictation section, switch on Enable dictation.
3. Grant Accessibility access from the row underneath (see the one new permission).

Both switches are read when Oris launches, so the group says “Saved. Relaunch Oris to apply.” until you quit and reopen the app. The dictation hotkey is latched at launch the same way. Activation and insertion are live: change either and your next dictation uses the new value.

Speaking into an app

The default hotkey is ⌥⇧Space, deliberately a different chord from the quick-note default so the two never fight. To change it, click the shortcut field once: it outlines itself and reads Press keys, you press the combo you want, and the field shows it with a check mark that fades away — that check is how you know it took. Escape backs out without changing anything, and a combo macOS has already claimed is refused on the spot with the reason. Pressing ⌫ while the field is waiting clears the hotkey instead of setting one — the field says so while it waits. Clicking away closes the field without changing anything you hadn’t already pressed, and only one shortcut field is ever waiting for keys at a time. While a field is waiting, Oris’s own global shortcuts stand down — so you can type a combination that is already in use without setting it off — and they come back the moment the field is done with, however it ends. Hold it while you speak and release when you’re done. A tap too quick to be a real hold records nothing rather than starting a capture you didn’t want, and the hold is a strict superset of a press: if a release is ever missed, pressing the hotkey again always finishes the dictation, so it can’t get stuck.

While you hold, the same small panel Quick Note uses sits in the top-right corner with a record dot, a timer and a level meter. On release it moves through “Transcribing…” and “Inserting…”, then a short toast names where the text went: “Inserted into Slack”. The first dictation after you open Oris usually has to get the speech engine ready, and the panel says so, “Preparing model…”, or “Downloading speech model…” when the speech model you have chosen isn’t on your Mac yet. After that Oris keeps the speech engine ready for a few minutes, so the dictations that follow usually skip the model preparation entirely and the text lands sooner; leave it idle for a few minutes and Oris lets the engine go again rather than keeping it in memory between sessions, and you will see “Preparing model…” once more on the first dictation after that pause, or after you change the speech engine or the language. The panel also says “Waiting for another transcription…” when a meeting recording is being transcribed and your dictation is queued behind it. Those are the same labels, for the same reasons, described on the Quick Note page. The Oris mark in your menu bar turns purple for the whole capture, with “Dictating…” on the menu’s first line, so an open microphone is visible from anywhere on the screen; a quick note turns it blue and a meeting red.

The text appears when you release, all at once. Dictation is decode-on-stop, like Quick Note: speak the sentence, let go, and it lands a few seconds later, or longer when a meeting recording is being transcribed at that moment and the dictation has to wait its turn.

Transcription uses the Speech engine chosen on the Quick Notes section, shared with Quick Note rather than duplicated here. Tidy up quick notes with AI is a quick-note setting only: dictated text is inserted as the speech engine transcribed it, punctuation included, which keeps the release-to-text wait short.

Turn down other audio while you speak applies to dictation as well. It is the same setting quick notes use, under General → While you speak — on General rather than either capture’s own section precisely because it governs both — and it is on by default: your Mac’s output fades to a quarter while a dictation is capturing, which in hold mode means while you hold the hotkey and in press mode until your second press, and fades back the moment the capture ends, which keeps most of any music you have playing out of the microphone while you dictate, and so out of the text. Change the volume yourself mid-dictation and your change stands. The Quick Note page has the details, including why a meeting recording never does this.

Two ways to activate

Under Activation on the Dictation section:

• Hold the hotkey while you speak, then release to insert. The default. Suits the sentence-at-a-time rhythm of typing into another app.
• Press to start, press again to insert. Suits a longer passage, since you’re free to gesture or scroll while you talk.

This is the opposite default from Quick Note, whose default is press-to-toggle, and the two are set independently.

The one new permission

Putting text into another app needs macOS Accessibility access, granted to Oris in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility. It is the only permission dictation adds: the microphone was granted when you first recorded, and dictation records through the same recorder quick notes do, so there is no second microphone prompt.

The Dictation section carries an Accessibility row that says which state you’re in. Until it’s granted it reads “Dictation needs Accessibility access to type into other apps. Until then, dictated text is saved to Quick Notes.” with an Open System Settings button beside it; macOS also shows its own prompt the first time Oris asks. Once you flip the switch in System Settings the row changes to “Accessibility access is on.” within a second, no relaunch needed.

Nothing you dictate is lost while the grant is missing. Oris still records and transcribes; it just can’t type. The text is saved where your quick notes go, the in-app inbox by default, and the toast says so: “Saved to Quick Notes”, with the reason underneath. Open it from Quick Notes → Open quick notes like any other capture.

How the text gets in

Under Insertion you choose how Oris delivers the words to the front app. All three run on your Mac; what differs is which apps accept them and whether the clipboard is involved.

Method	What it does
Paste (recommended)	Pastes through the clipboard and restores your clipboard when it can. Works in nearly every app.
Accessibility	Inserts through macOS Accessibility. On its own it leaves the clipboard alone, but some apps ignore it.
Type it out	Types the words out one keystroke at a time. Slowest, works almost everywhere, and on its own leaves the clipboard alone.

Your choice is the first thing tried, not the only thing, and the three methods differ in what Oris can see afterwards. With Accessibility, Oris reads the field back after writing and counts the insertion only when the text is actually there. An app that tells macOS it took the text and then shows nothing, which some apps built on Electron do, is caught that way, and Oris falls through to paste, then typing; the toast still just says where the text landed. Paste and Type it out send a ⌘V or the keystrokes to the front app, and macOS gives no receipt for those. Oris can confirm it sent them, not that the app took them, so they fall through only when the sending itself failed, such as a clipboard that couldn’t be written or a key event that couldn’t be posted. An app that quietly drops a paste therefore gets a toast that reads “Inserted into …” with nothing at the cursor; if that happens, run Test insertion in that app and pick a different method for it.

Only when nothing could be sent, or the Accessibility write was the last method left and the app didn’t take it, does Oris fall back the same way it does without the permission: the text is saved to Quick Notes and the toast reads “Oris couldn’t insert the text (tried paste, accessibility, typing) — it was saved to Quick Notes instead.”

That makes the setting a preference about how the text is delivered rather than a promise about your clipboard. Choosing Accessibility or Type it out keeps the clipboard out of the ordinary case, but an app that rejects your chosen method gets the paste fallback, clipboard and all. If you dictate into an app where the clipboard matters, run Test insertion there first and read which method landed.

With Paste, Oris copies what was on your clipboard, pastes the dictation, and restores your clipboard a moment later. On recent macOS the system can ask before an app reads the clipboard; when reading would trigger that prompt Oris skips the restore rather than interrupting you, and the Test insertion line below tells you which happened.

Never into a password field, and never past secure keyboard entry. When a secure text field has focus, macOS marks the keyboard as secure and Oris refuses to insert anything at all. The dictation is saved to Quick Notes instead and the toast reads “A password field had focus, so nothing was inserted — the text was saved to Quick Notes instead.” The same refusal applies when the app in front has turned on secure keyboard entry for itself, the way Terminal’s Secure Keyboard Entry setting or an unlocked password manager does, and when secure entry is held system-wide by something Oris can’t tie to the front app. Those toasts name the case: “Terminal had secure keyboard entry on, so nothing was inserted — the text was saved to Quick Notes instead.”, or “Secure keyboard entry was on system-wide, so nothing was inserted — the text was saved to Quick Notes instead.”, with the process holding it in brackets when macOS says which one. If you see the system-wide line and no password field is anywhere in sight, that holder is the thing to close.

Test insertion

Test insertion, at the bottom of the group, is for checking an app before you rely on dictating into it. Click it and a three-second countdown starts; switch to the app you want to test and click into a text field. When the countdown ends, Oris inserts a fixed phrase, Hello from Oris. Dictation test., using your configured insertion method and the same fallbacks a real dictation gets.

The line beside the button then reports what happened, in one sentence: which app received the text, which method got it in, whether your clipboard was put back, and, when the app ignored the method you chose, that it fell through — “Inserted into Agent Inbox via paste, clipboard restored (Accessibility didn’t land in Agent Inbox, pasted instead).” Some apps, Electron ones in particular, tell macOS they took an Accessibility insertion and then show nothing; Oris checks the field afterwards rather than believing them, which is what makes that fall-through happen instead of a silent no-op. A refusal is reported the same plainly: a password field had focus, an app had secure keyboard entry on, Accessibility isn’t granted yet, or the text couldn’t be got in by any method. It’s a real insertion into a real app, so run it in a scratch document.

Dictation, quick notes and meetings

Dictation and Quick Note share one capture, so only one of them runs at a time. Press the dictation hotkey while a quick note is in flight, or the other way round, and the second press is refused with “Voice capture already in progress.”

Meetings win, exactly as they do for quick notes. Press the dictation hotkey while a meeting is recording and nothing is captured; the panel says “Meeting recording in progress” and asks you to stop the meeting before dictating. Start a meeting recording while you’re mid-dictation and the dictation is cancelled, “Dictation cancelled”, with the reason named. The Quick Note page explains why a cancelled capture is discarded rather than half-saved.

A dictation fired while a meeting recording is being transcribed isn’t refused, it waits: the panel says “Waiting for another transcription…” until the model is free, then carries on.

Quitting mid-sentence

Quitting Oris while a dictation is in progress doesn’t drop it. Oris finishes the capture first, “Finishing your dictation…”, inserts or saves the text, and then quits, the same courtesy quick notes get.

Changing the hotkey

The Dictation hotkey field records a new combination in place: click it, press the chord you want, and it’s saved. A key with no modifier is refused (the field shakes), so a bare letter can’t quietly take over a system-wide shortcut, and a combination that matches your quick-note hotkey draws a warning rather than being silently taken. As with the Quick Note hotkey, macOS claims many combinations for itself without saying so; the group warns you when the one you’ve chosen is known to be reserved, and it shows whether the registration itself succeeded. A new hotkey takes effect after a relaunch.

Privacy

Transcription runs on your Mac. When the insertion succeeds, the dictated text goes to the app in front of you. When it can’t be inserted, it’s saved where your quick notes go: the in-app inbox by default, or the vault note or Apple Notes note you’ve pointed quick notes at, with whatever syncing that place already has. Dictated text isn’t sent through the AI tidy-up pass, so it never makes the trip to a summarization provider the way a tidied quick note can. When Paste is the method, Oris reads your clipboard only to put it back afterwards and doesn’t keep it. Two permissions are involved, both granted to Oris: Microphone, already granted for recording, and Accessibility, granted once for dictation.

How it works underneath

While dictation is on, Oris keeps a recorder prepared in the background, and when one is waiting your press starts listening before you finish pressing the key. It isn’t listening while it waits: nothing is captured and no microphone indicator appears until you press. Each prepared recorder is used once and then replaced, and a fresh one is prepared when your Mac wakes, so the first dictation after a night’s sleep is as quick as any other. A dictation that finds none ready — one pressed in the moment before the replacement is up, say, or just after you changed microphone — simply starts the ordinary way instead. The speech engine is kept ready the same way, for a few minutes after your last dictation rather than between sessions, so the model preparation happens once in a stretch of dictating instead of every time, and nothing is held in memory while dictation is off.

Every control on the Dictation section

The Dictation section is greyed out while Enable quick notes, on the Quick Notes section, is off. Two of its settings are read when Oris launches, the master switch and the hotkey; activation and insertion are re-read for every dictation and apply immediately.

• Enable dictation — the master switch, locked without Pro. Because it is read at launch, flipping it shows “Saved. Relaunch Oris to apply.” until you restart the app. If Enable quick notes is off, the tab is greyed out and says so, since dictation runs on the same capture.
• Dictation hotkey — a recorder field, defaulting to ⌥⇧Space. Refuses keys without a modifier, warns on a clash with the quick-note hotkey or a combination macOS is known to reserve, and shows whether the registration succeeded.
• Activation — hold to talk and release to insert (the default), or press to start and press again to insert.
• Insertion — Paste (recommended), Accessibility, or Type it out. The chosen method is tried first; the others follow when it couldn’t be sent, or, for Accessibility, when the app didn’t take it.
• Accessibility — a status row saying whether the grant is present, with Open System Settings while it isn’t. Refreshes on its own once you grant it.
• Test insertion — a three-second countdown, then the fixed phrase is inserted into whichever app you focused, and one line reports the app, the method and whether the clipboard was restored.