Support

Quoth lives in the menu bar, at the top-right of your screen, as a small closing quote mark (”), and has no Dock icon. Click it for the menu: Settings…, Copy Last Dictation, Fix Last Dictation… and Quit. If you have many menu bar items, it may be hidden behind the notch; quit a few other menu bar apps or use a menu bar manager.

Microphone, to hear you. The open-source edition also needs Accessibility, to notice your dictation key; it only listens to modifier keys like fn, so it never sees what you type. The App Store edition's dictation key is a key combination (⌥Space by default) registered with macOS, which needs no permission. The App Store edition also offers Paste at cursor, which is optional: without it, each dictation is copied for you to paste with ⌘V. If you skipped a permission, choose Finish Setup… in the menu.

The first start downloads a speech model, about 150 MB, once. The menu says Loading model… until it's ready, then Ready — hold fn to dictate (hold ⌥Space in the App Store edition).

This is about the open-source edition; the App Store edition uses a key combination, ⌥Space unless you chose another. Many third-party keyboards, including most Logitech ones, handle fn inside the keyboard and never tell the Mac about it. Choose another key in Settings › General › Hotkey: left or right Option, Command, Control or Shift. Also check System Settings › Keyboard › "Press 🌐 key to": it should be Do Nothing, or the Mac acts on fn itself.

Yes. A quick tap of the key, or holding it together with another key, is ignored, so a shortcut like ⌥← on Option still works.

In the App Store edition, Quoth pastes only after you allow Paste at cursor (Settings › General). Until then, each dictation is on the clipboard: press ⌘V. If you clicked into another window mid-dictation, Quoth copies the text instead of typing it somewhere you didn't mean. Either way, Copy Last Dictation in the menu brings back your last dictation for 10 minutes.

No. When a password field is active, Quoth doesn't type or copy the transcript, and doesn't keep it.

Double-tap the key quickly. The pill at the bottom of the screen shows a lock, and you can talk for as long as you like. Text appears each time you pause, and one tap of the key stops. A locked recording stops by itself after 10 minutes.

macOS uses a double press of fn for its own Dictation. Turn its shortcut off in System Settings › Keyboard › Dictation › Shortcut (Settings › General has a button that opens it), or choose another hotkey for Quoth.

Yes. A shortcut that uses your hotkey, or connecting a headset, ends the lock and keeps everything you've said so far. A lock never throws your words away.

When you dictate in English (more languages to come):

• “new paragraph” and “new line” break the text; “bullet point” starts a bulleted line.
• “comma”, “semicolon”, “question mark”, “exclamation point” and “full stop” type their marks. “period” and “colon” do too when you pause around them, so “a trial period” stays as it is.
• “quote” … “unquote” puts the words between in “quotes”.
• “scratch that” removes what you said just before it, or, said on its own, what Quoth just typed. It only deletes in the same field Quoth typed into.

Settings › General › Voice commands has the same list.

A small card that floats over your work, for dictation you'd like to read before it goes in. Choose New Quote Card in the menu, or set Settings › General › Hands-free goes to to Quote Card so a double tap opens it. While it is open, everything you dictate goes into it; edit it with the keyboard, say “scratch that” to remove the last part, then press ⌘↩ to insert it in the app you were using, or Copy All. Esc closes it, and Copy Last Dictation still has the text for 10 minutes.

Right after it happens, choose Fix Last Dictation… in the menu, select the word Quoth got wrong, and type how it should be spelled. From then on it's spelled your way. You can also edit the list in Settings › Dictionary, and add an example sentence that uses your words, which helps the model recognize them in the first place.

Settings › Model. Base (English) is the fastest and fine for everyday English. Small (English) is more accurate. If you dictate in other languages, choose a model under Multilingual, including English: Large v3 Turbo (compressed) is the most accurate for its size. A new model downloads when you choose it.

Yes, with a multilingual model. Whisper knows 99 languages; accuracy is best in widely spoken ones and lower in languages with less training data. Leave Language on Automatic and tick the languages you speak under Languages you speak; Quoth picks among those for each dictation. In a hands-free dictation, it keeps the language it heard first.

From about 150 MB (Base) to 1.6 GB (Large v3 Turbo). Settings › Model › On this Mac lists each downloaded model with its size; Delete… removes one. The model in use can't be deleted, and a deleted model downloads again if you choose it later.

Only to download a model, once. After that it works offline, and your speech never leaves your Mac.

Choose Quit Quoth in its menu, then drag Quoth from Applications to the Trash. If you turned on Open at login, turn it off first in Settings › General. To also delete your settings, dictionary and models:

• App Store edition: delete ~/Library/Containers/com.victorshammas.quoth.
• Open-source edition: delete ~/.config/quoth, ~/Library/Application Support/quoth, ~/Library/Logs/quoth and ~/Library/Caches/quoth.

In Finder, choose Go › Go to Folder… (⇧⌘G) and paste the path. You can remove Quoth from System Settings › Privacy & Security › Microphone and Accessibility too.