A microphone that is instantly available
Vox sits against your skin, so it hears you from a few inches away instead of a few feet. It picks up quiet speech that a laptop mic would miss, and the noise around you is much further away than your voice is, so it stays in the background. In practice this means you can speak at a volume that people nearby will not really catch. You do still match the room a little, the way you would with anyone standing next to you: a bit more voice in a loud cafe than in a quiet office. That part is automatic. Most people are just surprised by how little Vox needs. See Getting the best accuracy.On Mac: dictation and shortcuts everywhere
On a Mac, Vox does what tools like Wispr Flow and Superwhisper do, out of the box. Put your cursor in any text field, press a button or a keyboard shortcut, talk, and the text appears where you were typing. Slack, email, a code comment, a form, anything. You can also map each button to the shortcuts you use most, and fire them with a press. There are voice commands too: hold a button and say “switch app” or “undo”, and Vox runs it rather than typing it out. Vox can also present itself as a microphone to other apps, so if you already have a dictation tool you like, it can record from Vox instead.Map your buttons
Assign a press or double press on the white, red, and grey buttons.
Use Vox with other apps
Select Vox as the input device anywhere on your Mac.
On iPhone: capture without pulling your phone out
On iOS the value is different. The biggest one is notes: press a button and talk, and the thought is saved, with your phone still in your pocket. You can dump an idea, leave yourself a reminder, or think out loud about a problem while you are walking. iOS also does dictation into any text field, through a Shortcut you trigger with the Action Button. It works, with a couple of caveats worth knowing about up front. See Vox on Mac vs iPhone.What a day looks like
You put Vox on in the morning and forget it is there. On the commute you start brainstorming the presentation you have to give, out loud, but without bothering anyone around you. A random thought about something unrelated shows up, so you capture that too. You get to the office, sit down, and the notes are already waiting for you. The rest of the day you dictate into Slack and email without touching the keyboard for the long messages. Ideas tend to arrive when you are walking, cooking, or between two meetings. By the time you are back at a keyboard, most of them are gone.Where it fits well
- Shared offices and open plan. You can dictate without narrating your work to everyone around you.
- Long messages and emails. Talking is faster than typing, and Vox cleans the text up.
- Moving around. Notes work with your hands full and your phone away.
- Anything repetitive on a Mac. Shortcuts on a button you are already wearing.
Where it fits less well
- When someone is talking directly to you. Vox does not yet distinguish your voice from a close-by speaker, so pause.
- Whispering in noisy places. It does work, but only somewhere quiet.
Next
Set up on Mac
The whole first-run setup, in about five minutes.
Set up on iPhone
Including the Shortcut that makes dictation work.