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Dictation is Scout’s core feature. Hold a hotkey, speak, and Scout types what you say into whatever app has focus.

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Push-to-talk

The default dictation mode. Hold your dictation hotkey, speak, and release to inject text.
Hold Ctrl+Shift to dictate. Release to inject.
1

Place your cursor

Click into any text field in any app.
2

Hold the dictation hotkey

Scout starts streaming audio to the speech engine immediately.
3

Speak naturally

Talk at a normal pace. You can say voice commands inline — they’re detected and converted in real time.
4

Release to inject

Scout finalizes the text — applying dictionary, quick phrases, and writing style — then injects it at your cursor.

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Hands-free mode

For longer dictation, use hands-free mode so you don’t have to hold a key.
Press Ctrl+Alt+Space to start. Press again to stop.
Hands-free sessions have two automatic safeguards:
  • 15-minute maximum — Sessions automatically end after 15 minutes.
  • 90-second silence stop — If Scout detects no speech for 90 seconds, it stops the session.
Text is accumulated during the session and injected when the session ends.

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How text injection works

Scout uses a clipboard-based injection method:
  1. Your current clipboard text is saved
  2. The transcribed text is copied to the clipboard
  3. Scout simulates a paste keystroke (Ctrl+V on Windows, Cmd+V on macOS)
  4. Your original clipboard text is restored
The clipboard save/restore preserves text content. If you have non-text content (images, files) on the clipboard, it may not be restored after injection.

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Processing pipeline

Between your voice and the final text, Scout runs several processing steps on your machine:
  1. Voice commands — Punctuation, symbols, line breaks, and formatting commands are detected and converted. See Voice Commands.
  2. Auto-list formatting — Digit-based numbered lists from the speech engine are formatted into clean list items.
  3. Vocabulary corrections — Words in your dictionary are matched and replaced using fuzzy matching.
  4. Quick phrases — Trigger phrases are expanded to their full replacements. See Quick Phrases.
  5. Writing style — If you have a writing style configured for the current app, it’s applied (unless a quick phrase was expanded).
  6. Text injection — The final text is injected at your cursor.
If something doesn’t look right, say “undo that” — Scout sends the undo shortcut (Ctrl+Z / Cmd+Z) to the focused app. Note that this undoes whatever is on the app’s undo stack, which may include non-Scout actions if you’ve typed or edited since dictating.