Dictate one sentence
- Open TextEdit and click into a blank document so the cursor is blinking.
- Hold down the fn key (bottom-left of most Mac keyboards). The pill's quill turns green to show it is listening.
- Say, naturally: "She opened the door comma and the cold came in period new paragraph"
- Release fn. The pill shows "polishing…" for a moment, then your text lands at the cursor.
You should see two tidy lines: the spoken words "comma" and "period" became punctuation, and "new paragraph" started a fresh line.
Screenshot arrives with the release build
A short fictional sentence inserted into a TextEdit window with the Murmurtale pill visible below.
What the pill is telling you
While you hold the key, the pill shows a live level meter and a running word count, plus a small Fiction or Plain badge for the mode you are in. On release it briefly reads "polishing…" while Murmurtale cleans the text, then inserts it. Text appears when you let go, not word-by-word as you speak.
Where to go next
- Wondering about that badge? See Modes and hotkeys — the key you hold picks Fiction or Plain.
- Writing dialogue? Dialogue and paragraphs explains how quotes and speaker breaks work.
- Names coming out wrong? Add them to a dictionary.