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Both start the same way, by holding a button and talking. What happens to the words afterwards is the difference. On Mac, use the Buttons and Notes items in Vox’s left sidebar. On iPhone and iPad, use the Buttons and Notes items in the bottom tab bar. Settings mentioned in this article are in the Settings tab or sidebar item.

Dictation

The text goes into the app you are using, as if you typed it. Dictations stay on the device in dictation history and are not uploaded as Notes.

Notes

The text goes into Vox, saved and searchable. Nothing is inserted anywhere else.

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Use dictation when

You have a cursor somewhere and you want words at that cursor. Writing a Slack message, filling a form, replying to an email, writing code comments.

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Use notes when

You want to say something now and deal with it later. Walking between meetings, capturing an idea, leaving yourself a reminder. There is no target app and no cursor involved, so it does not matter what is on screen.

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Telling them apart while you use them

Dictation is intended for a focused text field and inserts text there. Notes do not insert anything into the app in front of you; they are saved in Vox. Notes also receive more aggressive cleanup and formatting by default, while dictation stays closer to the words you said, with lightweight cleanup. Dictation formatting can be enabled or left off in Settings → Basic → Dictation → Format dictation.

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Switching between them

On Mac, open Buttons in the left sidebar, select a button, and choose a gesture row: Press, Double press, or Hold. Set the action to Start / Stop Dictation to type into the focused app, or Start / Stop Note to save a note in Vox. On iPhone and iPad, open Buttons in the bottom tab bar and select a button and gesture. iOS offers note capture actions such as Start / Stop Note and Add to Last Note, but not Start / Stop Dictation; button presses default to note capture because iOS cannot send keystrokes into another app.

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What happens to notes afterwards

Notes are listed in the Notes tab, newest first. You can search them, label them, and copy the text out. Notes upload to your account when you are online. If you are offline, Vox keeps the capture locally and retries the upload later. Once uploaded, the note appears on your other signed-in devices.
Dictations are retained locally. On Mac, open Settings → Basic → Dictation → Dictation history. On iPhone and iPad, open Settings → Basic → Dictation history. Notes are the better choice when you want a searchable, account-synced record that is available on other devices.