Context Awareness

Context Awareness reads your active app and adapts transcription accuracy, style, and formatting automatically — so emails sound like emails and Slack messages sound like Slack messages. It's on by default.

What it is

Context Awareness identifies the app you're using and adjusts your dictation accordingly. It improves accuracy by detecting names in emails, applies your Style Personalization settings based on the app category, and handles smart formatting in apps like Notion.

When to use it

Use this feature when you want to:

• Dictate emails and have Flow automatically recognize recipient names and apply a professional tone.

• Switch between apps like Slack and Google Docs without manually adjusting your writing style.

• Dictate into Notion without Flow picking up placeholder text like "Heading 1" or "Type something..."

How it works in Flow

Overview

Flow reads a limited amount of text near your cursor and identifies your active app — using accessibility APIs on Mac, UI Automation on Windows, and app detection on Android. For browser-based apps, Flow identifies the specific website by URL, so Gmail, Google Docs, and other web apps are recognized individually.

Flow recognizes four app categories — Email, Work messaging, Personal messaging, and Other. Email, Work messaging, and Other default to Formal and offer Casual and Excited as alternatives. Personal messaging defaults to Casual and offers Formal and Very Casual. When an app could belong to more than one category, Flow prioritizes in this order: Personal messaging → Email → Work messaging → Other.

Key behaviors

• Improved accuracy: Flow uses names and context visible on screen (such as email recipients) to recognize proper nouns and preserve correct capitalization.

• Style matching: Flow detects your active app's category and applies the matching Style Personalization settings you configured during onboarding. On Android, style changes take effect immediately — even if you start dictating right after switching styles.

• Conversation context: Flow reads conversation context in Slack and Apple Messages for better transcription accuracy. Other apps benefit from general nearby-text reading but do not have dedicated conversation context support.

• Smart formatting in Notion: Flow detects and ignores common placeholder text in Notion fields (such as "To-do", "Heading 1", and "Type something..."), so dictated text appears in the right place with correct formatting.

• Browser recognition: Chrome, Safari, Arc, Brave, Edge, Firefox, Opera, and other browsers are supported. Flow identifies the specific website rather than the browser. On Android, Flow reads the current browser URL to route web apps to the correct category (e.g., outlook.office.com is recognized as Email rather than Work).

• Android app coverage: Flow recognizes a wide range of popular Android apps and automatically applies the right writing style. This includes personal messaging apps (WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Messenger, Discord, and more), work apps (Slack, Teams, Zoom, LinkedIn, Notion, Jira, Google Docs, and more), and email clients (Gmail, Outlook, ProtonMail, Spark Mail, and OEM mail apps from Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, and others).

• Context-aware formatting: Flow adjusts casing, spacing, and punctuation based on surrounding text. When continuing mid-sentence, the first letter is lowercased, and leading or trailing spaces are added as needed. Trailing-period stripping depends on your writing style: Formal never strips, Casual strips for short dictations, and Very Casual always strips. Only the period is stripped — not ! or ?. Stripping is skipped if the line already has punctuation, if text is selected, or if the dictation is longer than 2 sentences.

• Persistent context in code editors: Flow remembers file names from Cursor and Cursor-like editors such as Windsurf across dictation sessions, so proper nouns seen in one session are recognized in the next. VS Code is not included in file-name memory.

Privacy protections

• Local processing: Context data is read locally on your device. During an active dictation session, relevant context (nearby text, proper nouns, app metadata, dictionary entries, and — in coding environments — variable and file names) is sent to Wispr's servers to improve transcription accuracy.

• Password fields excluded: Password field contents are never read or included in context data. Your spoken audio is still transcribed as normal. On Mac, password field detection uses the standard macOS secure text field indicator — some custom or non-standard password inputs may not be detected.

• Privacy Mode: When enabled, no dictation or context data is retained or used for training. Privacy Mode is permanently locked on if you have signed the HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (BAA), or if your enterprise admin enforces zero data retention (ZDR).

• Accessibility permissions: On Mac, you must grant accessibility permissions in System Settings for Context Awareness to function. On Windows, no explicit accessibility permissions are required.

• Android sensitive-app protections: On Android, the Flow Bubble is suppressed and context capture is silently skipped inside banking and financial apps (including Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Barclays, Monzo, Revolut, HDFC, Paytm, Nubank, PayPal, Cash App, Venmo, and 140+ others across major regions). The Flow Bubble is also suppressed in password, numeric, and phone-number fields.

Examples

FAQs

Limitations and notes

• Context Awareness is available on Mac, Windows, and Android. Windows support is more limited — some accessibility tree features available on Mac may not function identically, and context-aware formatting adjustments are skipped when dictating inside the Flow app itself.

• On Mac, accessibility permissions must be granted in System Settings for Context Awareness to function.

• On Enterprise plans, admins can disable Context Awareness for all users from the Organization settings page under Data Controls. Enterprise organizations can also enforce local data deletion policies (auto-delete after 24 hours, or never store) separately from ZDR.

• Local data storage options are available in Settings → Data and Privacy: Store data locally (default), Auto-delete local data every 24 hours (deletes transcripts and polish history older than 24 hours, with a confirmation dialog), and Never store data locally (immediately deletes all transcripts and polish history, with a confirmation dialog).

• Context reading has built-in performance limits: a 0.75-second timeout for the accessibility tree scan and a 150,000-character cap. In code editors like Cursor and VS Code, additional context (file names, text areas) is collected with a 1-second timeout.