SpeaklySpeakly

Choosing your shortcut

One global shortcut, with keyboard rules worth knowing

Speakly uses a single global shortcut. Hold it to talk, or tap it to start and tap again to stop; two quick taps open Agent Mode. There are no separate per-mode shortcuts. While a dictation is recording, esc cancels it — the audio is thrown away and nothing is pasted; outside a recording, Speakly leaves esc alone.

How it behaves

Open Settings → General → Keyboard shortcut → View and choose one of three behaviours under How it behaves:

  • Hold or tap (the default) — hold the shortcut down and speak, let go and Speakly transcribes; or tap it once to start and tap again to stop.
  • Hold to talk — recording happens only while the key is held down.
  • Tap to toggle — tap to start, tap again to stop; holding does nothing. This is what Speakly did before.

The line between a tap and a hold is 250 ms: let go sooner and it counts as a tap, keep the key down longer and it is push-to-talk. Holding needs Speakly's own key listener, which ships on both macOS and Windows. On macOS it needs Accessibility permission; without that the shortcut falls back to Tap to toggle and the other two options are greyed out.

Changing it

  1. Open Settings → General
  2. Under Keyboard shortcut, click View
  3. Press the combination you want
  4. Close it — the new shortcut applies immediately, no restart
A modifier on its own is allowed
The default is exactly that — a lone Right ⌘. Speakly does not swallow a modifier-only shortcut, so ⌘C and every other shortcut on that key keep working: press the modifier and then another key within about 0.4 s and Speakly reads it as an ordinary shortcut and records nothing. This needs Speakly's native key listener; without it (macOS without Accessibility permission) a modifier-only shortcut falls back to Right ⌘ + Right ⇧ + Space.

Left and right modifiers are different keys

The default deliberately uses a right-hand modifier (the Right ⌘ key on macOS, Right Ctrl + Enter on Windows) to leave the left-hand ones free, since nearly every system and application shortcut uses those. Switch to a left-hand modifier and expect more conflicts. If you had already picked your own combination, Speakly keeps it: the new default only reaches installs that never changed it.

If the shortcut stops working

  • Another app registered the same combination first — first to register wins
  • Pick a different combination under Settings → General → Keyboard shortcut → View
  • On macOS, also check Input Monitoring under Settings → Permissions
Choosing your shortcut — Speakly