Open Settings from the Settings tab in the sidebar. Settings are organized into five sub-tabs: General, Dictation, Corrections, Models, and About.
General
| Setting | Type | Default | Description |
|---|
| Theme | System / Light / Dark | System | App color scheme. System follows your macOS appearance. |
| Hide from app switcher | Toggle | Off | Remove Tota from the Cmd+Tab app switcher. The menu bar icon remains accessible. |
| Monitor clipboard history | Toggle | Off | Record text copied to the system clipboard. |
| Archive transcriptions | Toggle | On | Auto-archive transcriptions older than 3 days as Markdown files. Includes a folder picker and an Open in Finder button. |
| Replay the welcome tour | Button | — | Revisit the first-run setup and feature walkthrough. |
Dictation
Permissions
Status rows for Accessibility, Microphone, and Speech Recognition. Each shows a green "Granted" check or a button to grant access via System Settings.
Audio Input
| Setting | Type | Default | Description |
|---|
| Device | Picker | Automatic (Built-in Mic) | Select which microphone to use. If your preferred mic disconnects, Tota falls back to another device and switches back automatically when it reconnects. |
Keyboard Shortcuts
| Setting | Type | Default | Description |
|---|
| Toggle Recording | Shortcut recorder | Cmd+Shift+R | Global shortcut to start/stop recording. |
| Hold to Speak | Picker | Option | Modifier key to hold for recording. Options: Option, Control, Function (fn), or Disabled. |
| Learn Corrections | Shortcut recorder | Cmd+Shift+D | Global shortcut to manually commit dictionary edits. |
| Reset to Defaults | Button | — | Restore all shortcuts to their factory defaults. |
Behavior
| Setting | Type | Default | Description |
|---|
| Auto-paste after transcription | Toggle | On | Automatically insert transcribed text at the cursor. |
| "Hey Tota" wake word | Toggle | Off | Listen in the background and start recording when you say "Hey Tota", "wake up", or "hey Mac". Requires Speech Recognition permission. |
| Auto-stop recording on silence | Toggle | Off | Automatically stop recording after a pause. Silence duration adjustable from 0.5 to 10 seconds (default 2). |
Transcription
| Setting | Type | Default | Description |
|---|
| Mode | Transcribe / Translate | Transcribe | Translate types the English translation of whatever language you speak. Requires a multilingual model (Large v3 or Large v3 Turbo). |
| Language | Picker | English | With a multilingual model: Auto-detect or one of 13 languages. |
| English Spelling | US / UK | US | UK keeps British spellings (colour, realise, centre) in transcriptions and Smart Formatting. |
Corrections
| Setting | Type | Default | Description |
|---|
| Smart corrections | Toggle | On | Master switch: apply your dictionary and custom word fixes to each transcription. Turn off to keep raw transcription. |
| Automatically learn corrections | Toggle | On | Watch for edits after pasting and learn word corrections. When off, use the Learn Corrections shortcut instead. |
| Phonetic vocabulary matching | Toggle | On | Fix mishearings of your active glossary's terms (e.g. "versel" → "Vercel"). |
| Correction threshold | Stepper (1–10) | 2 | Occurrences required before a word swap is auto-applied. Word edits (e.g. recieve → receive) apply immediately. |
| Auto-pick glossary by app | Toggle | Off | Choose the best glossary for the app you're dictating into (e.g. Slack → Names, VS Code → Development). |
Models
Whisper Model
Radio list of transcription models with a Load Model button. Base (English) is built-in; other models download from HuggingFace on first use. Selecting a model does not switch until you click Load Model — a notice reminds you if dictation is still using the previous model.
Smart Formatting
Enable Smart Formatting (default: off) turns on the on-device AI cleanup pass. First-time use downloads the formatting model (~2.3 GB), with progress shown inline. See the Smart Formatting article for details.
About
License
Displays your current license status (Trial, Active, Expired), days remaining, and options to activate or deactivate a license key.
Updates
| Setting | Type | Description |
|---|
| Check for Updates | Button | Manually check for a new version. Disabled if your license is expired or inactive. |
| Automatically check for updates | Toggle | Enable or disable automatic update checks. |
Acknowledgements and Support
Buttons for third-party library credits and support resources.
