Library and the editor

Every dictation becomes a note you can edit, refine with presets, compare with the original, copy or share. How history, pins and retention work.

The Library

Everything you dictate is saved as a note, unless you turn history off. Notes are listed by day: Pinned, Today, Yesterday, Earlier, with a search field at the top. Meetings and Recently Deleted sit below them.

Mac: choose Open Scribe… (⌘O) from the menu bar. The window has the Library in the sidebar and the editor on the right. Right-click a row for Pin, Copy or Delete; swipe a row for Pin or Delete.
iPhone: the list under the Talk button on the Dictate tab. Tap a note to open it. Swipe right to Pin or Copy, left to Delete; long-press for the full menu, including Share.

Create a note without dictating: New Note (Mac ⌘N) or Paste as New Note (Mac ⇧⌘V; on iPhone, the Paste button in the empty Library or editor).

The editor

A plain text editor with the Refine presets along the bottom: Refine, Proofread, Shorter, Clearer, Friendlier, Professional, Bullets, Translate, plus a mic chip on iPhone to dictate at the cursor. See Refine for what each preset does.

A preset applies to the selected text if there is one, otherwise to the whole note, and works on the text as it is now, so presets chain. The changed range is briefly highlighted in amber. Each result is one undo step (⌘Z on the Mac; shake or the toolbar on iPhone). If a rewrite fails, the text is unchanged and the bar says so.

Edits save automatically. The menu also offers Save as Copy (keeps the original note untouched and opens the copy), Copy, Share, Revert to Original and Delete.

Show changes

Every note remembers its original text. Turn on Show changes in the menu, or with the chip at the end of the preset bar, to see a word-level comparison: inserted words on amber, removed words struck through. The note is read-only while the comparison is shown. Edited notes carry a small pencil mark in the list.

Revert to Original puts the original text back; it asks first, and you can undo it.

How long notes are kept

Keep history (Mac: Settings › History & Privacy; iPhone: Settings › History) can be Off, 1 day, 30 days or Forever. The default is Forever.

It applies only to untouched dictations. A note you edited, pinned, pasted or typed yourself is kept until you delete it. Clear history removes untouched dictations and keeps everything else; Delete all notes… removes everything. Deleted notes go to Recently Deleted for 30 days.

With history Off, nothing is saved, but the last dictation is still kept for one hour so Insert last and Paste Last Dictation work.

Dictate now, refine later

Capture the thought on the phone while it is fresh, then tidy it on either device when you have a moment. Each device keeps its own Library; there is no account and no sync. To move notes, use Backup.

Common problems

A note disappeared. Check Recently Deleted at the bottom of the Library, then your Keep history setting: untouched dictations older than the period are removed. Pin or edit a note to keep it.