Use Flow hands-free

Dictate without holding a key or button when writing longer messages or working with your hands occupied. Flow inserts your transcript when you finish.

Mac and Windows

Sign-in and microphone access are required. Non-paying users cannot exceed their weekly word limit, and IT-admin accounts cannot dictate. During setup, dictation requires an eligible practice page, and double-tap requires later practice or the hands-free tutorial.

Place your cursor in any text field, then start one of three ways:

• Press your hands-free shortcut — Fn + Space on Mac, Ctrl + Win + Space on Windows — and speak after the ping. On Macs without Fn, onboarding sets Ctrl + Opt + Space.

• Click the Flow Bar, shown by default.

• Double-tap your push-to-talk shortcut within half a second of starting — Fn (Mac), Ctrl + Win (Windows), or Ctrl + Opt on Macs without Fn. A separate hands-free shortcut is optional.

On both platforms you can set Caps Lock on its own as your push-to-talk or hands-free shortcut, and tap it twice to start hands-free. While Caps Lock is bound alone, Flow keeps the Caps Lock toggle off so your typing stays lowercase. On Mac, grant Input Monitoring so Flow can detect the key being held.

Stop and paste your text

Press your hands-free shortcut again, or click the stop (■) icon in the Flow Bar, and your transcript pastes into the active text field. Cancel instead with X or Esc (the default on both platforms); the cancellation notice offers Undo and Open History.

Flow auto-stops a session for excessive duration, no audio detected, or failure to access your microphone. It warns at 19 minutes and stops at 20; that audio is transcribed, not discarded.

If desktop dictation fails

1. Press Paste Last Transcript — Ctrl + Cmd + V (Mac), Alt + Shift + Z (Windows) — to recover text that didn't paste. Interrupted or failed dictations are retried before pasting.

2. Confirm your cursor stayed in a text field while dictating.

3. Check Recent Activity in Flow. If your text appears there but not in your app, try a different app to see whether the issue is app-specific.

On Mac, a failed paste with no transcript text to offer shows a “Paste Failed” notice instead of replacing your clipboard. Your first Cmd+V after that may paste nothing — press Cmd+V once more to restore what you had copied before dictating.

Being offline does not block or stop desktop dictation; Flow warns and saves audio for retry if transcription fails. Shortcuts are ignored while Flow is stopping, processing, retrying, or testing the microphone — wait, then try again.

iOS

Keyboard shortcuts aren't available on iOS. The Flow keyboard requires Full Access, microphone permission and an available weekly word allowance.

1. Open the Wispr Flow app.

2. Tap into a text field so the cursor appears.

3. Tap the microphone icon to start recording, then speak your text.

4. Tap the checkmark to insert your transcript, or X to cancel.

These controls also work in the Flow keyboard in other apps, where Start may open Flow to activate the microphone. Dictation is already running at that point; follow the prompt and swipe back to your app manually if needed.

Android

By default, the Flow Bubble needs a focused text field and a visible on-screen keyboard; closing the keyboard hides it. A Settings switch removes the keyboard requirement.

1. Tap a text field to open the on-screen keyboard.

2. Tap the Flow Bubble to start recording, then speak your text.

3. Tap Done (checkmark) to stop and insert your transcript.

Cancel discards during recording or processing, and is the only control available during processing. Dictation is limited to 5 minutes: Flow warns “1 minute left before you reach the 5-minute limit,” then stops and transcribes at the limit rather than discarding audio.

If Android dictation fails

• Offline: controls are greyed out, tapping cannot start recording, and Flow shows “No internet. Try again later.” If the connection degrades mid-dictation, you see “Taking longer than usual. Your audio is saved in the app.”

• Transcription failed: after “Failed to transcribe. Saved in the app.”, tap Retry; the Wispr icon starts a new dictation instead.

• Insertion failed: text is copied automatically — tap Paste, or dismiss with the Wispr icon and paste manually. Copy appears for 5 seconds only when insertion cannot be confirmed, and disappears when dictation restarts, the bubble hides, or accessibility needs repair.

Snooze the bubble

Dragging a ready bubble to the bottom snoozes it for 10 minutes, then it returns. To return early, tap End snooze now on Flow's home screen, or shake rapidly in a text box — shake needs an unlocked phone and the Wispr Flow accessibility service enabled, and works only while snoozed, never in restricted banking apps. If you see “Snooze is unavailable while accessibility needs attention,” snooze is off; an accessibility disconnection cancels snooze and reveals the bubble.

Press Enter without touching the keyboard

On Mac and Windows, Press Enter command is off by default and lives in Flow Hub → Settings → Experimental, visible only with an active personal or enterprise subscription. Once enabled, end dictation with “press enter” to remove the phrase and press Enter after a successful paste; mid-sentence and in Command Mode it stays as text.

The first detection shows a one-time prompt instead of pressing Enter: Great enables it and presses Enter for that dictation; Disable restores the stripped words and keeps future occurrences as text.

Still stuck?

Contact support if dictation won't start after restarting Flow, transcripts never paste into any app, or an unlisted error appears. Include your platform, OS version, device, shortcut, apps tested and steps tried.