An email to a client and a message to a colleague are not the same kind of text, and you should not have to change a setting between them. Sprecho recognises the app you are dictating into and applies the formatting you chose for that kind of app.
You configure this once on the Models page. After that it is automatic.
How Sprecho knows which app you are in
When you press the dictation key, Sprecho looks at the application that currently has focus and reads its identifier — the bundle ID on macOS, the process on Windows. If that application is a browser, it also reads the URL of the active tab, so Gmail in a browser tab is recognised as email rather than as "a browser".
Everything is then sorted into one of five categories:
| Category | Covers |
|---|---|
| Personal messages | iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal |
| Work messages | Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord |
| Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail | |
| Code | VS Code, Cursor, Xcode, Terminal |
| Other | Notes, ChatGPT, Notion — and anything unrecognised |
The web versions are covered too: mail.google.com, outlook.office.com,
web.whatsapp.com and app.slack.com land in the same categories as their
desktop apps.
Anything Sprecho does not recognise falls into Other. That is not a failure state — Other is a real category with its own setting, and it is where most word processors, ticketing tools and internal web apps live. If most of your writing happens in an app that is not on the list above, configure Other first.
Where to change the style for an app
- Open Sprecho and click Models in the sidebar.
- Choose the tab for the category you want: Personal messages, Work messages, Email, Code or Other.
- Pick a formatting model. Standard keeps your wording exactly as spoken and cleans up punctuation and layout. Thinking rewrites your sentences for grammar and readability without changing your meaning.
- Repeat for the other tabs. Each one is independent.
Changes take effect on your next dictation. Nothing to save, no restart.
The banner above the cards names the apps the current tab covers, and the line underneath states that the choice applies to every dictation from this device.
A setup that works for most people
| Category | Model | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Thinking | Longer prose is where a full editing pass pays off — this is also the shipped default | |
| Personal messages | Standard | A message that still sounds like you |
| Work messages | Standard | Fast, and your phrasing survives |
| Code | Standard | Identifiers and commands must not be rewritten |
| Other | Standard | Faithful cleanup is the safe default for unknown apps |
If you write long documents in an app that falls under Other, switching that category to Thinking is usually the single best change you can make.
Why there is no formal-versus-casual switch any more
Older versions of Sprecho asked you to pick a tone — formal, casual, very casual, excited — for each category. The current models take their cue from the text itself: a two-line message to a friend and a client email are recognisably different inputs, and the model treats them differently without being told.
What remains configurable is how much editing you want, and that is the Standard-versus-Thinking choice.
Related
- Formatting models — what each model does in detail.
- How Sprecho formats what you say — the pipeline behind the setting.
- Vibe Coding — the extra help the Code category gets.