How do I use Smart Formatting & Backtrack

Dictate numbered lists, insert exact punctuation, or fix mistakes mid-sentence. Smart Formatting structures your text automatically, and Backtrack lets you correct yourself without stopping.

How to enable Smart Formatting

How to use Smart Formatting and Backtrack

Context-aware formatting

Flow adjusts capitalization based on where your cursor sits — lowercase mid-sentence, capitalized after sentence-ending punctuation. It also adds spaces before and after your dictation as needed.

In messaging apps, Flow removes trailing periods for a more casual feel. Supported messaging apps include iMessage, WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, Telegram, Signal, Microsoft Teams, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Google Messages, and others. Instagram, X (Twitter), Facebook, Reddit, and Google Voice are detected in web browsers only.

Trailing-period removal applies when:

• The current line has no existing period, exclamation mark, or question mark.

• No text is selected.

• Your Writing Style allows it (see below).

Behavior by Writing Style:

• No Writing Style set (default in detected messaging apps): trailing periods are removed when the dictation is at most two sentences in detected messaging apps.

• Casual: trailing-period removal applies in any app, for dictations up to about 10 sentences.

• Very Casual: trailing-period removal applies in any app, with no sentence limit.

• Formal: trailing periods are always kept, even in messaging apps.

Multilingual formatting

Smart Formatting supports an expanded set of languages, including Chinese (and Cantonese) and Russian, in addition to previously supported languages.

Creating lists

Use numbers or sequence words ("one… two…" or "first… second…") to create a list automatically.

Inserting punctuation

Flow handles most punctuation automatically. Say a punctuation mark by name when you need exact control. Exact phrasing isn't critical — common variants are recognized. Examples:

• Period: "period" or "full stop"

• Comma, question mark, exclamation point

• Colon and semicolon

• Dash, em dash: "em-dash", "em dash", or "emdash"

• Quotation mark: say "quotation mark" instead of "end quote" for best results

• Apostrophe: "apostrophe" or "single quote"

• Asterisk: "asterisk" or "star"

• Ampersand: "ampersand"

• Percent sign: "percent sign", "per cent", or "percentage symbol"

• Ellipsis: "ellipsis"

• Slash: "slash", "forward slash", "per", or "divided by"

• Backslash: "backslash"

• Underscore: "underscore"

• Hashtag: "hashtag" or "hash"

• Tilde: "tilde"

• At symbol: "at", "at sign", or "at symbol"

• Angle brackets: "angle bracket", "greater-than sign", or "less-than sign"

• Parentheses: "open parenthesis", "close parenthesis", "open paren", "close paren", or "brackets"

• Plus sign: "plus" or "plus sign"

• Minus sign: "minus" or "negative"

• Equals sign: "equals" or "equals sign"

• Trademark: "trademark" or "tm"

• Registered trademark: "registered trademark"

• Copyright: "copyright" or "copyright symbol"

• Degree symbol: "degree sign" or "degree symbol"

• Degrees Celsius: "degrees celsius" or "degrees centigrade"

• Degrees Fahrenheit: "degrees fahrenheit" or "degrees f"

• New line: "new line", "next line", or "line break"

• New paragraph: "new paragraph"

Press Enter (desktop only)

Say "press enter" at the end of your dictation to simulate pressing the Enter key after your text is pasted. The phrase is only detected at the end of a dictation — saying it mid-sentence leaves it intact in your text.

Trailing punctuation is handled intelligently: both "Hello world press enter." and "Hello world. Press enter." produce Hello world. followed by Enter. If "press enter" is the entire utterance, no text is pasted but Enter is still pressed.

The first time Flow detects "press enter," it removes the phrase from your text but does not press Enter. An in-app prompt then asks if you'd like to enable the feature. Click Great to enable Press Enter, or Disable to opt out. If you click Disable, the "press enter" phrase is restored to your text. Once enabled, future uses work as expected. Enabling Press Enter from Settings also dismisses this prompt.

Using Backtrack

Backtrack removes disfluencies, false starts, and self-corrections. You can use a trigger word like "actually" or "scratch that," or simply restate naturally — Flow uses your full dictation as context to decide what to change.

Examples

FAQs

Limitations and notes

• Smart Formatting is enabled by default on all platforms.

• On Android, Smart Formatting cannot be turned off.

• On iOS, only an on/off toggle is available — there is no finer level selection.

• "Press enter" is a desktop-only command and is suppressed in Command Mode.

• Trailing-period removal depends on your Writing Style and dictation length.

• Multilingual formatting — including Chinese (and Cantonese) and Russian — is supported. The system does not distinguish Simplified from Traditional Chinese.

Still stuck?

Reach out to support if:

• Smart Formatting is not applying punctuation, lists, or capitalization after you've confirmed it's enabled.

• Backtrack is removing words you wanted to keep, or ignoring clear corrections.

• A punctuation command listed above isn't being recognized.

Include your platform, app version, and an example of what you said versus what Flow wrote. Most formatting issues are resolved in one reply.