User Guide

Getting Started

Activation

Hold the Fn (Globe) key to start dictating by default. Release to stop and insert text into the active app. You can switch the trigger key to Right Option from the status bar menu.

Auto-Stop Mode

Double-click your trigger key to enter auto-stop mode. Dictation continues after you release the key and automatically stops after 2 seconds of silence. This is ideal for longer dictation sessions where you don't want to hold a key down.

Hands-Free with Siri

Say "Hey Siri, start touch" to begin dictation completely hands-free. In auto-stop mode, your text is automatically inserted after 2 seconds of silence.

Accessibility Permission

Hush Touch needs Accessibility permission to insert text into other apps and detect when you release the trigger key. Go to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility and enable Hush Touch.

Without Accessibility permission, the app falls back to auto-stop mode (text is inserted after 2 seconds of silence instead of on key release).

Trigger Keys

Choose which key activates dictation. Configure via the status bar menu under Trigger Key.

Overlay Controls

When the transcription overlay is enabled, it shows your live dictation with keyboard shortcuts for quick actions. Toggle the overlay on or off via the status bar menu.

Live Output

Live Output controls whether text appears in the focused app as you speak, or only after dictation ends. Toggle via the status bar menu.

• On (default) — Text streams into the focused input field while you speak, giving real-time feedback. In some apps, this may overwrite other text already in the field.
• Off — Only the finished result is inserted after dictation ends. Use this if you notice live output interfering with existing text in the target app.

Voice Commands

Speak these commands during dictation to control formatting and text flow.

Formatting

Caps toggle also accepts: caps on/off, caps lock on/off, uppercase on/off, and upper case on/off.

Send Phrase

The send phrase stops dictation and presses Enter in the target app. The default is ok press send — customize it in the status bar menu.

Variations are automatically recognized: "okay press send", "please press send", etc. You can prefix commands with: ok, okay, please, hey, hush, or touch.

Stop Phrases

Say any of these to stop dictation without pressing Enter. Your transcribed text is still inserted.

Emoji Dictation

Insert emoji by speaking their names. There are two styles depending on how unique the name is.

Say "emoji" after the name

For common single words that might appear in normal speech, add "emoji" after the name to avoid false positives.

Multi-word names (no suffix needed)

These phrases are unique enough to be recognized without saying "emoji" afterward.

The Dictation engine (macOS 26+) also has built-in emoji support, so saying phrases like "smiley face" may produce the emoji directly from the speech engine itself.

Speech Engines

Hush Touch supports multiple speech recognition engines. Select one via the status bar menu under Speech Engine.

Accuracy Over Speed (Dual and Local AI)

When using the Dual engine or Hush Touch Local AI, enable Accuracy Over Speed in the Speech Engine menu to wait longer for the Classic companion engine to stabilize before finalizing. This can improve vocabulary capture at the cost of slightly slower output.

Smart Text Features

Toggle these features via the status bar menu under Smart Text.

Stutter removal is always active — repeated words like "the the" or "to the to the" are automatically cleaned up.

Context Modes

Context modes override individual Smart Text toggles to optimize for specific workflows. Set via the status bar menu under Smart Text > Context Mode, or per-app via App Profiles.

Casual mode also lowercases all output text, which is useful for informal messaging apps where capitalization feels overly formal.

Audio Settings

Configure audio behavior via the status bar menu under Audio.

• Sound Effects (default: ON) — Plays an audio cue when dictation starts and stops. Automatically muted while Bluetooth audio is active to avoid interference.
• Lower Volume While Listening (default: ON) — Reduces system volume during recording so the microphone picks up your voice more clearly.

Custom Vocabulary

Teach Hush Touch words it doesn't recognize — technical terms, brand names, acronyms, or names specific to your work.

• Up to 500 custom words and phrases
• Auto-Learn Per App (default: ON) — when you correct a transcription error, the correct word is automatically saved to your vocabulary for that app. Toggle via the status bar menu.
• Per-app profiles — create up to 10 app profiles with app-specific vocabulary and context modes via Edit App Profiles
• Edit vocabulary via the status bar menu: Edit Vocabulary

Vocabulary data is stored locally on your Mac at ~/Library/Application Support/Hush Touch/ and never leaves your device.

Voice Snippets

Voice snippets let you expand short trigger phrases into longer replacement text — great for email signatures, addresses, boilerplate responses, or anything you type repeatedly.

• Up to 50 snippet mappings
• Format: trigger phrase → replacement text
• Example: my email → john@example.com
• Edit via the status bar menu: Edit Voice Snippets

When you say the trigger phrase during dictation, it's automatically replaced with the full expansion.

Session History

Hush Touch keeps a local history of your recent dictation sessions so you can review and copy past transcriptions.

Recent Dictations

Your last 5 dictations appear in the status bar menu under Recent Dictations. Click any entry to copy it to the clipboard.

Full Session History

Click View all recent dictations to open the full session history (up to 50 sessions). Each entry shows:

• Date and time
• Speech engine used
• Target app
• Corrections (including auto-learned vocabulary)
• Merge substitutions (for Dual engine)

Each session has a Copy button, and you can Clear History to remove all stored sessions. All session data is stored locally and never leaves your device.

Apple Intelligence Final Output

On macOS 26+, Hush Touch can use Apple Intelligence as a final polish pass on your transcription before inserting it. Configure via the status bar menu.

Modes

• Off — No AI post-processing (default)
• Proofread — Fixes grammar and spelling while preserving your voice
• Rewrite — Rewrites the output in a chosen style

Advanced Settings

When Proofread or Rewrite is active, you can fine-tune the AI behavior:

• Temperature — Controls randomness (0.0 = deterministic, 1.0 = creative). Default: 0.15
• Max Tokens — Maximum output length. Default: 384
• Rewrite Style — Light, Balanced, or Heavy. Default: Light
• Sampling Mode — Greedy, Top-K, or Probability. Default: Greedy

Text Processing Pipeline

Your dictation passes through these processing stages in order. Understanding the pipeline helps explain why certain features interact the way they do.

1. Voice snippets — Trigger phrases are expanded first, before any other processing
2. Emoji conversion — Spoken emoji names are converted to Unicode characters
3. Formatting commands — "new line" and "new paragraph" are converted to line breaks
4. All caps — "all caps on/off" toggles uppercase mode on surrounding text
5. Filler word removal — "um", "uh", and other filler words are stripped
6. Stutter removal — Repeated words and bigrams are cleaned up
7. Auto-correction — "actually" and similar triggers replace the previous clause
8. Numbered list formatting — Spoken ordinals are formatted as numbered lists

After this pipeline, if Apple Intelligence is enabled, a final proofread or rewrite pass is applied before the text is inserted.