Dictation

Recording and dictation solve different problems. Recording is for conversations, where who-said-what matters and you want the audio and transcript preserved. Dictation is for you: it turns your speech into text at the cursor, then throws the audio away.

	Recording	Dictation
For	Meetings, conversations	Your own thoughts
Output	Audio + labeled transcript + summary, attached to the note	Plain text at your cursor
Audio kept	Yes	No
Speaker labels	Yes	No — it’s just you

Dictate into a note

Place the cursor where you want the words, then click the waveform Dictate button in the editor toolbar. Wait for it to connect, talk naturally, and click Stop dictation and keep text to finish. You’ll see the live text appear as you speak, then settle into final form. It lands at the starting cursor position, including mid-sentence or inside a list. Moving to another note does not redirect the speech: when the destination note is closed or out of view, the timeline header shows its name and a Stop control.

Dictation needs an internet connection and can stop after inactivity. Use Record audio for a conversation whose audio and speaker labels you want to keep.

Where else you can dictate

Dictation works in the assistant composer too — press Cmd+L, dictate the question, then send it. Stopping dictation keeps the words as an unsent draft; Send finishes dictation and submits the question. Useful on mobile, where typing a detailed prompt is the slow part.

When to prefer which

• Debriefing yourself after a customer visit → dictation into the account note.
• The customer visit itself → recording (in person).
• “Remember to follow up on the security review” → dictation, then make it a task (tasks and todos).

One habit worth stealing: after any meeting you didn’t record, dictate a two-minute debrief immediately. It’s the cheapest way to make the meeting exist in your workspace at all.