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Dictation
Dictate into any note with Apple, an on-device Parakeet or Whisper model, or a cloud provider with your own key (OpenAI, Soniox or a custom endpoint). A stop word ends it; magic words turn it into an AI request.
Updated for iOS 1.65
Dictation
Design Intent: Talking is faster than thumbs. Dictation should land in the note as text you would have typed, with the engine and the privacy trade-off your choice.
Starting
- Tap Dictate on the Quickbar, choose Audio under New note from in the Orb menu, use the Audio Note widget or control, or say "Dictate a note in Antinote" to Siri.
- First-run setup asks first: download Parakeet v3, use Apple Dictation, or skip. If you skipped, the first Dictate tap shows a sheet asking how Antinote should hear you: the recommended engine, Use iOS Dictation, or More options. You can change it any time in Settings › Dictation.
- While recording, a bar shows Cancel, Restart and Done. Dictating into an existing note inserts at the cursor; a new note from audio starts with a large recording ring. The text itself lands all at once when you tap Done.
- Show live transcript (Settings › Dictation, off by default) runs the words heard so far above the bar as you talk, with every engine. It is a preview: nothing is inserted until Done.
- Dictation is part of the Lifetime license.
It keeps going
- Lock the phone or switch apps and dictation carries on. The lock screen and the Dynamic Island show the recording — the clock, Done and Cancel, and the newest words when Show live transcript is on. Settings › Dictation › Keep recording in the background turns this off, and leaving Antinote then finishes the dictation with what was said.
- A phone call or Siri pauses the recording (the bar says Paused) and it picks up when they end. AirPods going back in their case hand over to the phone's microphone without a gap.
- If Antinote is force-quit or crashes while you are dictating, the audio is kept. The next launch asks whether to finish that dictation: the words are transcribed, cleaned up and placed where you were writing, or saved as a new note if that note is gone. Discard throws the recording away.
Transcription
- Settings › Dictation › Transcription is a three-way switch: Apple, On device or Cloud. Cloud transcription uses a provider you add (OpenAI, Soniox or a custom endpoint); the first-tap setup sheet's More options adds one the same way.
- Custom vocabulary, the cleanup switch and prompt, the stop word and the magic words sync between your iPhones and iPads when preference sync is on. Engines and downloaded models stay on each device.
- Apple — iOS's own recognition; stays on your phone.
- On device — a model you download once, about 500 MB: Parakeet v3 (the default and recommended — the most accurate and quickest, for 25 European languages) or Whisper Small (widest language support). A model whose download stopped part-way is marked "Partly downloaded", with Finish download to pick it up.
- Cloud — pick one of your providers that can transcribe: OpenAI, Soniox, or a custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Add a provider opens the same sheet as Settings › AI, showing only those three.
- Language — Automatic by default: Apple uses your system language and the on-device models detect it. Pick one in Settings › Dictation › Language or from the globe chip on the recording bar and every engine follows it; on Apple it changes mid-sentence.
- Custom vocabulary teaches the engines names, products and jargon. Near misses in a transcript are corrected to these terms with every engine, Parakeet included.
- Corrections are words dictation keeps hearing wrong and what they should be, applied to every transcript. The list lives in Settings › Dictation › Corrections. It also grows on its own: fix one word in text you just dictated and a chip above the Orb offers to remember the swap.
Clean-up, stop word and magic words
- After dictation, add decides what follows the inserted transcript: two new lines by default, so each dictation reads as its own paragraph and the next thing you type starts on a fresh line; set it to nothing, one or three.
- Clean up transcript runs the transcript through your AI provider before it lands ("Polishing…"): punctuation, filler words, false starts, paragraphs. With a cloud provider, a self-correction mid-sentence keeps only the correction and a dictated series becomes a list; Apple Intelligence keeps to the simpler clean-up, which its on-device model follows more reliably. Edit what it asks for under Dictation cleanup prompt. With no provider set up, the setup sheet offers the Antinote demo: a few clean-ups on us, no key needed.
- Remove filler words without AI — when no AI cleans up a transcript (AI hidden, cleanup off, or no provider), "um", "uh" and stuttered words still go. Nothing else is changed.
- The stop word is a phrase you set: say it to finish dictating hands-free. It is caught on-device and never lands in the note.
- Under the heading Turn a dictation into an AI request: the magic words ("hey antinote" by default) turn what follows into an AI request about the note. The answer is written into the note, or spoken if Read answers aloud is on. Request settings, under the Magic words box, picks the Provider and Read answers aloud; AI request context sets how much of the note goes along. See AI features.
Settings