Hold fn and talk

Put the caret where you want the text, hold fn, and talk. When you let go, Riff cleans up what you said and puts the text at the caret, in a message, an email, a document, a search box, or a terminal.

The dictation key

• Hold fn, the Globe key, to talk, and let go to finish. In Settings you can choose the right Option, right Command, or right Control key instead, or record a key combination.
• Double-tap the key to lock dictation on, so you can talk hands-free. Press the key again to finish.
• Press Escape to cancel. Riff shows Undo for four seconds.
• A tap shorter than a quarter of a second, with no speech, is ignored.

If fn opens the emoji picker on your Mac, Riff offers to change that setting during setup.

Riff starts listening when you press the key and prepares speech recognition when it opens, so your first word is not lost.

The island

While you dictate, a small glass capsule hangs from the menu bar at the top center of the display with the pointer, under the notch on a Mac that has one. It shows level bars and the last few words Riff heard. When you let go it shows Polishing, then a check and the app that took the text, such as “Inserted in Mail”, and tucks away.

The island never takes focus from the app you are in. VoiceOver announces each state, it follows Reduce Motion and Reduce Transparency, and screen recordings and screenshots leave it out.

Where the text goes

Riff remembers the text field that had focus when you pressed the key and pastes the text there. It then puts back what was on your clipboard, and marks its own text so clipboard managers skip it. Riff never puts text into a password field.

When no text field has focus, or Riff does not have Accessibility access, Riff copies the text and the island says “Copied, press ⌘V”. Either way the take is kept in your history.

Edit by voice

Select text in any app, hold fn and Control, and say what to change, such as “make this friendlier” or “turn this into a list”. Riff rewrites the selection in place. If your dictation key is a key combination, add Shift to it instead.

Edit by voice uses the same writing models as cleanup, described in Writing on your Mac.

During a meeting

You can dictate while Riff takes meeting notes. The meeting indicator turns into the dictation island and back, and dictating into a Riff note puts the text at the note’s caret.

Cleanup and styles explains how Riff edits what you said.