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The Free plan includes 1 Tone, so you can build a real one before upgrading. Pro removes the cap.
API key required for the AI parts. A Tone with AI Enhancement on needs a Language Model connected. Set one up under Configure your AI. A Tone that only switches the speech model or dictation language works without any provider.
Tones are recording profiles that switch themselves on. A Tone can change your writing style, your speech model, your dictation language, and which AI model does the enhancing. It activates on its own based on the app you’re in, the website you’re on, or a key you press. Find them in the sidebar under Vowen AI > Tones.
The Tones page with a tone card showing its name, model chips and a website chip

Each tone card shows what activates it: its speech and AI models, and any website it matches.

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How a Tone is chosen

When you start dictating, Vowen resolves exactly one Tone, in this order:
1

A bound shortcut wins outright

If you started the recording with a Tone’s own shortcut, Vowen uses that Tone regardless of what app is focused.
2

Website rules

If a browser is frontmost and its URL matches a Tone’s website list, that Tone wins. A website rule deliberately beats an app rule. The page you’re on says far more about what you’re writing than “some window of Chrome is focused” does.
3

App rules

Otherwise, the first enabled Tone whose app list contains the focused app.
4

Global settings

No match, no Tone. Your global speech model, language, enhancement toggle and custom instructions apply.
A Tone that is switched off is skipped entirely at every step. Disabling behaves exactly like deleting it, minus losing the configuration.

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Creating a Tone

1

Open Tones

Sidebar > Vowen AI > Tones.
2

Create a new Tone

Click the create button. The editor opens as a single scrolling dialog with four labeled sections.
3

Fill in the four sections

See below. Only Icon & Name is required.
4

Save

A shortcut that collides with another Tone or a built-in shortcut blocks saving outright, with the conflict named.
The New Tone dialog with Icon and Name, an Activation group covering apps, websites and a shortcut, and a Models group

A new tone: what activates it, the models it uses, and the instructions it adds.

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The four sections

Pick an icon and type a name. The name is what the Tones list shows, what the recording pill shows while the Tone is active, and what a conflict warning names.
  • Active in Apps: pick apps from a searchable list of what’s installed. The Tone applies whenever one of them is focused.
  • Websites: see Website rules below.
  • Shortcut: bind a key (or mouse button) that forces this Tone. Choose hold or tap-to-toggle, the same choice the global shortcuts offer. A clear button removes the binding.
A Tone needs none of these. With all three empty it never activates on its own, which is useful while you’re still writing its instructions.
  • Speech Model: the transcription model to use. Defaults to “use global default”, with the current global named so you can see what you’re overriding.
  • Language: the spoken language for this Tone’s recordings. Also defaults to the global.
  • AI Enhancement: on or off for this Tone. Disabled until an AI provider is connected.
  • Language Model: which configured provider and model enhances this Tone’s dictation. Only appears once AI Enhancement is on.
A free-text area of style directives sent to the AI while this Tone is active, with a live character count. It is disabled unless AI Enhancement is on for the Tone, and the editor says so rather than letting you type into a field that will be ignored.

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Website rules

A Tone can list websites the way it lists apps, so a “Formal email” Tone can fire on mail.google.com without also firing on every other tab in the same browser.
Website rules work on macOS and Windows. Linux has no browser URL reading, and the tone editor says so if you add one there.
Type entries the way you’d say them, not as regexes: Scheme, www., ports, query strings and fragments are ignored on both sides. Path matching is segment-aware, so /vowen-ai matches /vowen-ai/repo but never /vowen-ai-labs.

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Installed web apps and PWAs

On macOS, a site you have installed as its own app still matches your website rules. That covers Chromium’s “Install this site as an app” and Safari’s “Add to Dock”. Those installs get a freshly minted bundle identifier per install, so no app list could ever name them, but Vowen recognizes the shape and reads the URL exactly as it would in a tab.
Vowen reads the browser URL only when at least one enabled Tone has a website on it. If none do, nothing is read and the feature costs you nothing.

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Per-Tone shortcuts

Binding a shortcut to a Tone gives you a dictation key that carries a whole profile. The Tone applies from anywhere, whatever app is focused. Press your “Technical” key inside your mail client and you get the technical Tone, app rules ignored.
  • Hold or tap-to-toggle, chosen per Tone
  • Mouse buttons can be bound as well as keys
  • Conflicts with another Tone or a built-in shortcut are detected before you save, and the conflicting owner is named
  • A Tone whose shortcut fires while it is disabled falls back to global settings rather than applying silently

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Switching Tones by hand

Two surfaces let you override matching without opening settings:
  • The idle pill carries a tone chip showing which Tone the next dictation would use. Open it and pick any Tone to pin it, or Automatic to hand control back to app and website matching. Pinning is sticky rather than one-shot, and the chip shows the pinned Tone with a visible marker so it can’t linger unnoticed.
  • The native notch bar (macOS) shows the same thing as a glyph with a dropdown: Automatic with the currently resolved Tone as its subtitle, then every Tone, then Manage tones.

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Example setups

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Personal finance email

MailOutlookSparkMail, Outlook, Spark
Instructions: “Write in a professional, polite tone for finance and billing correspondence. Use proper greetings and sign-offs. Be specific with amounts, dates, and reference numbers. Keep paragraphs short. Direct but courteous.” How it helps: Turns a stream-of-consciousness ramble about a charge, refund, or account issue into a clean, structured email a bank or merchant can actually act on. No more rewriting drafts before you hit send.
You speak
Hey so I noticed there’s this random thirty seven dollar charge on my card from like two days ago that I don’t remember making, can you guys look into this and let me know what it is, and if it was a mistake can you reverse it? Thanks
It sends
Hi,

I noticed a $37 charge on my card from two days ago that I don’t recognize. Could you confirm what this charge is for? If it was made in error, I’d like to request a reversal.

Thanks,

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Casual chat

SlackDiscordMessagesSlack, Discord, Messages
Instructions: “Keep it casual and friendly. Short sentences. No formal greetings or sign-offs. Use lowercase where natural.” How it helps: Strips formality so messages sound like quick DMs, not emails. Long, polite sentences collapse into punchy lines that fit the rhythm of a chat thread.
You speak
Hi team, I just wanted to let everyone know that I have finished the quarterly report and it is now ready for review whenever you have a moment to look at it.
It posts
q report’s done, take a look when you can

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Talking to AI coding agents

CursorCodexGhosttyCursor, Codex, Ghostty
Instructions: “Convert natural-language descriptions of UI changes into precise developer language. Use proper CSS, Tailwind, and component terminology. Be specific about properties, units, and behaviors. Keep it terse, agent-style prompts with no greetings or filler.” How it helps: When you describe what you want in plain English, the AI gets a clean technical instruction it can execute without guessing. “Make it look better” becomes a precise list of properties to change.
You speak
So basically I want the card on the left to take up all the rest of the room going across, and then inside it the buttons should be stacked on top of each other with some spacing between them, not crammed together.
It sends to your agent
Make the left card flex-1. Inside it, set the button container to flex flex-col gap-3.

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Brain-dump to structured notes

NotionObsidianNotesNotion, Obsidian, Notes
Instructions: “Format dictated thoughts as structured notes. Use bold headings for topics and bullet points for items. Group related ideas together. Strip filler words like ‘okay’, ‘so’, ‘I think’. Keep it scannable, no full paragraphs.” How it helps: Turns a rapid brain-dump into a clean, scannable document you can revisit later. Topics become headings, action items become bullets, and no rewriting is needed.
You speak
Okay so for the launch next month we need to finalize the pricing tiers, talk to legal about the terms update, the marketing team needs the screenshots by Friday, oh and we should test the onboarding flow one more time, also I want to add analytics events to track the new buttons, and let’s get a list of beta users to email.
It writes
Launch checklist
• Finalize pricing tiers
• Loop in legal for terms update
• Send marketing team screenshots by Friday
• Re-test onboarding flow
• Add analytics events on new buttons
• Compile beta user list for email

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How Tone instructions combine with global ones

A Tone’s instructions do not replace your global ones. When a Tone with AI Enhancement is active, the Tone’s instructions come first and your global Custom Instructions (Configure your AI > Configuration) follow, and the whole thing is sent as a single high-priority directive that overrides the base cleanup rules where they conflict. Keep permanent, universal rules global (spellings, name corrections, date formats) and keep the situational voice in the Tone. See Custom Instructions for how to phrase them.

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Per-Tone models

Each Tone carries its own model choices, so you can spend where it counts:
  • Speech model: pair higher accuracy with an email Tone, lower latency with a chat Tone.
  • Language: a Tone for a language you only write in one app, without switching your global setting.
  • AI model: a stronger model for long-form writing, the cheapest tier for quick messages.
A Tone with AI Enhancement off still applies its speech model and language. Turning enhancement off does not turn the whole Tone off. It only means nothing is sent to an AI provider for that dictation.

Set up an AI provider

Tones with AI Enhancement on require a configured Language Model. Connect Groq, OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, or any of 10 supported providers.