How to dictate in Word, Gmail, Slack and the rest

The one method

Click where the words should go. Hold the hotkey (Ctrl+Win on Windows, Ctrl+Option on a Mac). Talk. Let go. The text appears with punctuation and capitals in place. That's the whole thing, and it's the same in every app below.

Email: Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail

Click in the body of a new message and start with the greeting: "Hi Sarah, thanks for sending the report over, let's talk about the budget on Tuesday, best, Elliot." murmrrr notices the greeting and lays it out as an email: the greeting on its own line, paragraphs where you paused, the sign-off at the end. Say "new line" when you want a break on purpose.

Word, Google Docs, Pages

Long passages are where talking beats typing by the most. Hold the key for a whole paragraph at a time and just talk: pauses become full stops, questions get their question mark, and "new line" starts a new one. A list comes out as a list: "eggs, milk and bread" said as a list becomes three lines.

Slack, Teams, WhatsApp, Discord

Short messages are quicker said than typed, and these apps all take dictation into their message box. One thing to know: in some chat apps Enter sends the message, so read what landed before you press it. murmrrr never presses Enter for you.

Browsers, search boxes, forms

Anything with a cursor in it works: the address bar, a search box, a form on a website. If the cursor isn't in a text box at all, the bar opens up and offers the words to copy, and they stay in History (your last 50, kept only on your computer) in case you need them later.

Where it won't type

On Windows, a program running as administrator won't accept keystrokes from a normal app, so murmrrr's paste is blocked there; your words are still on the clipboard and in History. Everything else I've tried, including games, takes it. If you find one that doesn't, tell me.