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Recording Basics

Two recording modes

Voice Recorder Forge offers two distinct modes for capturing voice audio, each suited to a different workflow.

Dictation mode

Dictation is designed for system-wide, on-demand voice input. It works in any application — text editors, browsers, email clients, chat apps, and more.

  • Activated and deactivated with a global hotkey (default: Ctrl+Shift+Space)
  • Records until you press the hotkey again
  • Transcription runs automatically after you stop
  • Text is inserted at your cursor position (Windows) or copied to the clipboard (macOS)
  • Optionally cleaned up by auto-editing before insertion

Because dictation is hotkey-driven, the main app window does not need to be open or in focus.

Meeting recording mode

Meeting recording is designed for capturing longer sessions — calls, conferences, team meetings, or any extended audio you want a transcript of.

  • Started and stopped from the Meetings tab in the app
  • Supports pause and resume without ending the session
  • Captures microphone audio (and optionally system audio)
  • Transcription runs automatically when the session is stopped
  • The transcript and audio file are saved permanently to the local database
  • Past meetings are listed in the Meetings tab for review and AI enhancement

How audio is captured

Both modes use the system microphone by default. Meeting recording also supports capturing system audio (sounds coming from other applications) — see Audio Settings for details.

Audio is recorded in WebM format and held in a temporary location while being processed. For meetings, the final audio file is moved to the app's data directory once the session ends.

Transcription

After recording stops, audio is sent to the OpenAI Whisper API for transcription. The result is returned as text with confidence scoring and timestamps. See Transcription Overview for more detail.

Recording indicators

  • Dictation: A small overlay window appears in the corner of your screen while recording is active.
  • Meetings: The Meetings tab shows a live recording indicator with elapsed duration.