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Global shortcuts start and stop recording from anywhere on your computer. They live in Settings > Shortcuts.
These are the global recording shortcuts. For shortcuts that only work inside the Vowen window (command palette, search, back/forward, note tabs), see In-App Shortcuts.

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Default Shortcuts

Command Mode Shortcut triggers Command Mode, not plain dictation. Paste Last Transcription re-pastes your most recent transcription into the focused app without re-recording, which helps when a paste landed in the wrong window. It is off by default, so turn it on in Settings > Shortcuts before using it. Meeting Panel is the only shortcut not configured on the Shortcuts page. It lives in the Notes settings modal under Recording Defaults, directly below the floating recording indicator toggle. Vowen only registers the shortcut while a meeting-notes session is running and the indicator is enabled. See the meeting panel for what it opens.
Settings > Shortcuts listing Transcription Shortcut, Command Mode Shortcut, Hands-Free Mode and Start New Note with their key combinations

Settings > Shortcuts. Every rebindable action is one row: its keys, its Hold/Tap pill, an edit button and an on/off toggle.

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Customizing Shortcuts

1

Open Settings > Shortcuts

The Shortcuts section lists every rebindable action.
2

Click the key display box

A recorder dialog opens. Vowen suspends its own hotkeys while it is open, so pressing your transcribe combo binds it instead of starting a recording.
3

Press the combination you want

Keys are captured by physical position, not by the character they produce.
4

Save

The new binding takes effect immediately. If the combination is already taken, the dialog refuses it and tells you so (naming the tone, when a tone owns it).
The Record Shortcut dialog open over Settings > Shortcuts, prompting Press and hold the key combination you want to use, with Clear, Cancel and Save Shortcut buttons

The recorder waits for a combination rather than reading one key at a time — hold the keys down together, then Save Shortcut.

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Hold vs Tap Mode

Transcription and Command Mode carry a Hold / Tap pill next to the key display. The pill appears only on Transcription and Command Mode. Hands-Free Mode does not get one, since it is already a toggle by definition, and Start New Note, Paste Last Transcribed and Cancel Recording are single-action shortcuts with no mode. Each alternative shortcut carries its own Hold/Tap pill, so the same action can be push-to-talk on one binding and tap-to-toggle on another.
Settings > Shortcuts with the Hold and Tap pill on the Transcription Shortcut row highlighted

The Hold and Tap pill sits between the action name and its keys.

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Alternative Shortcuts

Adding multiple shortcuts for the same action is a Pro feature. The free plan supports one shortcut per action.
Transcription, Command Mode and Hands-Free each have an Add another shortcut button underneath them. An alternative is a full shortcut in its own right: it has its own enable toggle, its own Hold/Tap mode, and its own AI setting.
Settings > Shortcuts with the Add another shortcut button beneath the Transcription Shortcut row highlighted, and matching buttons under Command Mode Shortcut and Hands-Free Mode

Add another shortcut sits directly under the row it belongs to, so each action can carry more than one binding.

For example:
  • Main transcription: Fn
  • Alternative transcription: Ctrl + Space

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Per-Shortcut AI Override

The AI setting is a two-sided chip labeled Enhance with AI / Off, shown to the left of the key display box. It appears only on alternative shortcuts. The primary Transcription and Hands-Free rows have no AI control at all, and Command Mode has none anywhere because it always goes through the AI provider. New alternatives are created with AI off, so an alternative you add is a raw-text shortcut until you flip the chip. That chip is how the “one key for raw text, one key for polished text” pattern works. See Shortcut Patterns.

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Supported Keys

  • Control (left and right distinguished)
  • Shift (left and right distinguished)
  • Alt / Option (left and right distinguished)
  • Command / Windows (left and right distinguished)
  • Fn (macOS only)
  • Letters A to Z and digits 0 to 9
  • Function keys F1 through F24
  • Punctuation: - = [ ] \ ; ' ` , . /
  • The ISO 102nd key, the extra key found on ISO keyboards (left of 1 on Mac ISO boards, next to Left Shift on PC ISO boards). It types § on UK Mac, º on Spanish, < on German and French PC layouts.
  • Arrows: Up, Down, Left, Right
  • Navigation: Home, End, Page Up, Page Down, Insert
  • Whitespace and editing: Space, Tab, Enter, Backspace, Delete
Escape can only be bound to Cancel Recording. Every other row rejects it so the recorder dialog keeps a way to close.
Six buttons are bindable directly, with no vendor software involved:
  • Middle mouse button
  • M4 (usually “back”)
  • M5 (usually “forward”)
  • M6
  • M7
  • M8
Left and right click are deliberately excluded, since binding them would swallow ordinary clicking. M6, M7 and M8 have no equivalent in the browser layer and are captured through the native hook, so they only work on a mouse that actually reports them.Mouse buttons cannot be bound to Cancel Recording or to the Meeting Panel shortcut.
Mouse-bound shortcuts follow the same Hold and Tap modes as keyboard shortcuts. In the default Hold mode a mouse button is push-to-talk: recording stops when you release it. Set the shortcut to Tap and the button starts recording on the first press and stops on the next, ignoring the release.

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Keyboard Layouts

Vowen captures shortcuts by physical key position, so a binding keeps working when you switch layouts. What changes is the drawing. Vowen reads your active keyboard layout from the operating system and translates the key caps in Settings, so a key stored as Q shows as A on AZERTY, and the ISO 102nd key shows the character your layout actually types. The display updates live when you switch layouts. If you already had Vowen installed before the non-QWERTY keyboard work landed and you use a non-QWERTY layout, a one-time “Some shortcuts may need to be updated” modal appears after updating. It lists every configured shortcut as Vowen now reads it so you can confirm it still matches what you expect. Dismissing it either way (Looks good or Something’s off) marks it seen and it never returns. Fresh installs never see it.

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Hands-Free Mode

Press the hands-free shortcut once to start recording, press it again to stop.
  • Upgrade mid-recording: while a regular push-to-talk recording is running, completing the hands-free combination on top of it converts the recording to hands-free. You can then release everything and keep talking.
  • Cancel: press the Cancel Recording shortcut (Escape by default) to discard the active recording without transcribing it.
In regular push-to-talk mode, release the shortcut key to end the recording and trigger transcription.
Set push-to-talk to Fn and hands-free to Fn + Control. Hold Fn to start dictating; if the thought runs long, tap Control and release both keys. You are in hands-free without lifting a finger.

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Cancel Recording

Cancel Recording is a real rebindable row, enabled by default and bound to bare Escape. Turning its toggle off disables cancel-by-shortcut entirely; recordings can still be stopped normally. Once you change the binding, a reset arrow appears next to it that restores plain Escape. Cancelling a toggle-started recording (hands-free, or a Tap-mode shortcut) can be undone. Vowen offers a resume so an accidental Escape does not lose what you were saying. Hold-to-record sessions end with the key release and are never resumable.

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Left vs Right Modifier Keys

Vowen distinguishes between left and right modifier keys, so you can set:
  • Left Alt + Space for transcription
  • Right Alt + Space for Command Mode
The keys are identical, the side decides the behavior.

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Conflict Resolution

If two shortcuts share a common prefix (for example Fn and Fn + Control), Vowen waits a 500ms grace period before deciding which one you intended. The more specific shortcut wins if it arrives inside that window. Vowen refuses exact duplicates at binding time rather than resolving them at runtime. Global shortcuts, their alternatives, per-tone shortcuts and the Meeting Panel shortcut all draw on one shared namespace and are checked against each other, so a tone can never silently shadow your transcribe key. Custom Utility hotkeys are checked against the global shortcuts and against other utilities when you create them, but the Shortcuts page does not check back against utilities. If you rebind a global shortcut onto a combination a utility already uses, re-open the utility and give it a different key.
The Meeting Panel shortcut has to be expressible as a system-level accelerator. Fn chords, mouse buttons and bare keys are rejected there even though the Shortcuts page accepts them.