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Hotkey

Hold Fn and speak. If Fn doesn’t suit your keyboard, pick another key.

How the hotkey works

  1. Hold the hotkey and speak. The pill shows a live waveform.
  2. Let go. blabe transcribes and pastes.
  3. To cancel, press Esc or any other key while you hold the hotkey. With Accessibility granted, Esc cancels only the dictation and doesn’t reach the app. Other shortcuts, such as Fn+arrow, still do.

Taps under 0.3 seconds and silence are ignored. A recording stops on its own after 5 minutes.

Choose a different key

Open Settings… and pick a Hotkey:

  • Fn (🌐), the default.
  • Right Option
  • Right Command
  • Right Control

These are the right-hand keys, so the left Option, Command and Control keys keep working as usual. Some external keyboards don’t send Fn at all. If holding Fn does nothing, switch to Right Option.

Set the 🌐 key to Do Nothing

This applies only when your hotkey is Fn. By default macOS can open the emoji picker or start dictation when you use the 🌐 key, so holding Fn would open those too.

  1. Open System Settings → Keyboard.
  2. Set Press 🌐 key to to Do Nothing.

The choices are Change Input Source, Show Emoji & Symbols, Start Dictation and Do Nothing. The welcome window and Settings both have an Open Keyboard Settings button, and Settings shows what it’s set to now.

Send with the hotkey

Hold the hotkey, speak, and press Return to send the dictation to a coding agent even with automatic sending off. Coding agents has the details.