Dictation session time limits on Android

Flow's Android session limit can end a long dictation mid-sentence. To continue, let the current recording finish submitting before starting another session.

How the Android limit works

The 5-minute session limit cannot be changed or disabled. There is no countdown or remaining-time display.

Time counts from when the microphone starts recording, not when you tap the bubble. Waiting for Flow to connect and start recording does not count.

• At 3 min 59 s: A pop-up reads “1 minute left before you reach the 5-minute limit.” A single heavy vibration accompanies it on devices with vibration hardware. Recording continues.

• At 4 min 59 s: Flow stops and submits automatically, showing “Session ended, 5-minute limit reached”. Despite that wording, the stop is one second before five minutes—exactly one minute after the warning. There is no vibration at the cutoff.

The warning and automatic stop occur only while recording; neither triggers after you have stopped.

The cutoff submits your recording rather than discarding it. Flow transcribes and pastes it as with a manual stop, in both hold-to-dictate and tap/hands-free modes.

Continue a longer dictation

1. Wrap up your thought when the warning appears.

2. Stop recording before the cutoff to submit at a natural stopping point.

3. Wait for transcription to finish processing and submit.

4. Start a new session with the Flow bubble.

Each new recording gets a fresh session limit; time does not accumulate across sessions.

While text is processing, bubble presses are ignored without an error and are not queued; press again after submission. Pressing while Flow is preparing to record, before listening starts, cancels and dismisses that dictation.

Recover your transcript

If text cannot be pasted, Android still saves it in dictation history. Failed and empty transcriptions are saved too.

1. Open Flow's home screen.

2. Find the session in transcript history.

3. Copy the transcript.

4. Paste it into your app.

For a failed transcription, retry is available only if its recorded audio is still stored.

Transcripts are stored locally per device and do not sync across devices.

Android also uploads history metadata to Flow; transcript text and audio are included only with your consent and when that sharing is enabled for your account. Reporting a transcript uploads its history record if needed.

How iOS differs

iOS also caps each active dictation at five minutes, independently of its background-recording timer and weekly word allowance. For ordinary dictation, if the cap stops recording while the keyboard is inactive, Flow saves the transcript to history and posts a notification instead of pasting it.

• Background recording: Settings → “Disable Flow after”, subtitled “Decide when Flow turns off”, defaults to 5 min. Options are Never, 1 hour, 15 min, 5 min, and immediately. This timer applies only while Flow is recording in the background, the keyboard is inactive, and no transcription is running. The immediate option stops background recording once those conditions apply after a dictation; Never sets no background time limit. This setting also determines whether recording resumes after a phone-call or Siri interruption.

• Weekly words: Free's standard weekly allowance is 1,000 words, with a hard cutoff at 1,500. Eligible users during an active bonus period get a 6,000-word allowance and cutoff: the base 1,000 plus 5,000 bonus words.

Still need help?

Contact support if a submitted Android dictation is missing from both your app and history. Include your device, the message you saw, and what you tried.