Settings & appearance

Back to docs
The short version: Click the menu bar icon, choose Settings… (or hit ⌘,). The app is small. This page covers the bits that aren’t obvious from the label.

Picking a microphone

The microphone picker lives in the menu bar itself, not in Settings. Click the icon and choose under Microphone.

  • System Default: whatever macOS thinks the input is right now. Shown with the device name in parentheses, so you always know what it actually is.
  • A specific device: locks dictation to that mic. If you unplug it later, TongueType falls back to system default automatically, and reconnects to your pick when it comes back.

Bluetooth headsets, USB mics, AirPods, and built-in mics all show up as soon as macOS sees them.

Choosing a language

Also in the menu bar, under Language. Eleven options plus auto-detect:

  • English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Dutch, Russian.
  • Auto-detect: lets Whisper figure it out from the first few words. Handy if you switch languages a lot, slightly slower than picking one explicitly.

Picking your actual language is usually the better call, since auto-detect occasionally guesses wrong on short phrases.

Output mode

Under Settings → General:

  • Insert text at cursor: the default. TongueType pastes the transcription wherever your cursor is.
  • Copy text to clipboard: transcription lands on the clipboard instead. You paste it yourself.

Clipboard mode is the move when you’re using screen sharing, when an app refuses paste for some reason, or when you just want a buffer.

The transcribe-file shortcut

Set a global keyboard shortcut to open the audio/video file dialog from anywhere, under Settings → General → Transcribe audio/video file shortcut. Click into the recorder field and press the combination you want.

The “Copy Last Transcription” menu

By default, the menu bar has a Copy Last Transcription item that puts your most recent dictation back on the clipboard. Useful when an app eats it before you can ⌘V, or when you want to send the same thing to two places.

If you don’t care about that, turn off Show “Copy Last Transcription” in menu. The last transcription is held in memory only and goes away when the app quits.

Sounds

TongueType plays three short sounds: a soft chime when the model finishes loading, a click when recording starts, and another when it ends. Turn them off under Enable sounds if you’d rather work in silence.

Launch at login

Toggle Automatically start at login on if you want TongueType ready the moment you log in. Off by default. We’ll never sneak ourselves into your startup items.

iCloud sync

Use TongueType on more than one Mac? Turn on Sync settings via iCloud under Settings → General and your preferences will follow you between machines that are signed into the same Apple ID.

What syncs: hotkey, grace period, double-tap latch, output mode, sounds, color scheme, accent color, overlay position, listening label, language, copy-last-transcription menu, postprocessing rules, cancel phrases, and the symbol-replacement list.

What stays local on each Mac: the microphone you picked, your lifetime transcription stats, the Transcribe File global shortcut, and the Setup Wizard’s permission grants. Those are intentionally per-machine, since “the right mic” and “has Accessibility been granted” depend on the device in front of you.

The first time you turn it on, if iCloud already has settings from another Mac, TongueType will ask whether you want to Use Settings From iCloud on this Mac or Replace iCloud With This Mac. Pick whichever you trust as the source of truth. The toggle itself is per-Mac, so flipping it off doesn’t affect any of your other Macs.

Appearance: the recording overlay

The little pill that appears while you’re recording is configurable in Settings → Appearance:

Color scheme

  • Light or Dark: force one or the other.
  • System: follow your Mac’s appearance.
  • Inverse of System: if you run macOS in light mode but want the overlay dark (or vice versa).

Accent color

Twenty colors for the recording dot and the audio waveform. Pick whichever feels least intrusive against your usual backdrop, or pick Rainbow Mode for a spinning gradient dot and a rainbow-painted waveform.

Overlay position

Seven anchor points: top-left, top-center, top-right, center, bottom-left, bottom-center, bottom-right. Top-center is the default because it’s mostly out of the way of where people type.

Listening label

The text shown in the pill while you’re talking. “Talk to type” by default. Change it to whatever you’d like to see for two seconds at a time: “Speak, friend, and enter,” for instance, or your name.

The grace period and double-tap latch

Both live in Settings → General, but they’re really about how dictation feels. They’re covered in detail on the Dictation page.

Where to next