Sometimes you start a dictation and immediately want it gone: the wrong window
had focus, a colleague walked in, or you realise mid-sentence that you want to
phrase it differently. Escape handles all of those.
Cancel with Escape
Press Escape while a recording is running. It works in both modes — while
you are holding the key, and while a locked hands-free recording is going.
What happens:
- Recording stops at once.
- Nothing is transcribed.
- Nothing is inserted into your document.
- The audio is discarded.
Escape is passed through to the app you are in afterwards, so it still closes whatever dialog or menu you had open. And when no recording is running, Escape does what it always does — Sprecho does not swallow it.
Cancel with the ✕ button, and the three-second undo
During a locked, hands-free recording the recording bar shows two controls: a stop button, which finishes normally, and a ✕ button, which cancels.
The ✕ path is slightly different from Escape: because a stray click is easier than a stray keypress, Sprecho holds the recording for three seconds and shows a small Undo pill. Click Undo and the recording is restored, transcribed and inserted as if you had never cancelled.
After those three seconds the audio is dropped and Undo does nothing. Escape has no undo at all — it discards straight away. If you are not sure, use ✕.
What happens to a cancelled recording
A cancelled recording is never transcribed. That is the important part: because transcription is the step that sends audio for processing, cancelling before it means the audio was never sent anywhere and never became a history entry.
Nothing lands in your dictation history, nothing counts against your weekly word quota, and there is no file to delete afterwards.
For what happens to recordings you do complete, and how long they are kept, see What Sprecho stores and where.
Redoing a dictation
Three different situations, three different answers:
| Situation | What to do |
|---|---|
| The text arrived but you want to rephrase it | Undo in the app (Cmd+Z / Ctrl+Z) and dictate again |
| The text did not arrive in the app | Press the paste shortcut — Control+Cmd+V on macOS, Ctrl+Alt+V on Windows and Linux — to re-insert the last transcription |
| The text arrived in the wrong window | Delete it there, click into the right field, and use the paste shortcut rather than dictating again |
| Transcription failed with an error | Sprecho offers a retry on the failed dictation; the audio does not have to be spoken again |
The paste shortcut is the one worth remembering. It re-inserts the most recent transcription, so a dictation that went to the wrong place never has to be repeated.
Stopping without cancelling
Do not confuse the two:
- Stop — press the dictation key again, or click the stop button. The recording is transcribed and inserted. This is the normal end of a dictation.
- Cancel —
Escapeor ✕. Nothing is transcribed.
Both are covered from the other direction in Hold-to-talk vs lock mode.
If Escape does not cancel
| What you see | What it usually is |
|---|---|
| Escape closes a dialog but the recording continues | No recording was actually running — check whether the recording bar is visible |
| The recording bar stays after cancelling | The overlay is stale; starting and stopping a new dictation clears it |
| Text still appeared after Escape | The transcription had already been sent when you pressed it. Undo in the app |