Edit Mode lets you edit text that's already on the screen with your voice. Select text in any app, hold your Aqua key, and say the change you want — Aqua rewrites the selection in place.
How it works
There's nothing to turn on and no second hotkey to learn.
- Select any text, in any app.
- Hold your usual Aqua key.
- Say the change, then release.
If you hold the key with nothing selected, you get normal dictation, exactly as before. If you hold it with a selection, Aqua switches into Edit Mode automatically and a small chip appears above the pill telling you what it's holding (e.g. "12 words selected"). Speak, release, and the selection is replaced.
What you can say
Edit Mode covers a much wider range than "fix my grammar":
You selected | You say | You get |
Great to meet you, Tony! | "It's T - O - N - I" | Great to meet you, Toni! |
See you tomorrow! | "Translate to Japanese" | また明日！ |
Revenue hit 10 million dollars | "abbreviate" | Revenue hit $10M. |
i can send that over tomorrow if that works for you | "Fix the grammar" | I can send that over tomorrow if that works for you. |
Thank you very much for taking the time to review this in such detail. | "Make it shorter" | Thanks for reviewing this so carefully. |
The meeting is at 5pm on Thursday. | "Change 5pm to 6pm" | The meeting is at 6pm on Thursday. |
very very | "Delete that" | (deleted) |
You don't need command words. If what you say is clearly a corrected version of what you selected, Aqua treats it as the replacement. Select "Hey John, let's meet on Tuesday.", say "Hey John, let's meet on Monday.", and you get the Monday version — no "change it to," no "replace with."
Edits stack, and they undo. Aqua remembers the previous versions of the same selection, so "undo that," "go back one step," and "go back to the original" all work as follow-up commands. You can iterate on a sentence out loud until it's right, then step backwards if you overshot.
Where it works
Edit Mode works in any app: native text fields, browsers, Google Docs, chat and email clients, code editors, note apps, and rich-text editors. Wherever you can select text, you can talk to it.
Two deliberate exclusions:
- Search fields and browser address bars. Selecting a URL in your address bar and dictating should type a query, not rewrite the URL, so Aqua stays in normal dictation there.
- Selections over 6,000 characters. Select a whole document and Aqua will dictate rather than try to rewrite it.
Try it in the app
Open Settings in the Aqua desktop app and click Try it on the Edit Mode card. The short tour ends on a live example: an email draft you can select and edit for real, so you can feel the interaction before using it on something that matters.
What versions of Aqua support Edit Mode?
Edit Mode is available in the desktop app v0.16.18 and up, on both macOS and Windows, for every user — it's not a separate purchase or tier. The iOS app has had its own voice edit mode since launch.
Edit Mode and your History
Every edit is saved in History with the original selection, the result, and the exact words you spoke, so you can see what Aqua heard if something comes out unexpected. If you use Aqua in privacy mode, the selected text and its edit history are redacted at rest along with the rest of your transcript.
Aqua dictated instead of editing — what should I do?
- Make sure the text was still selected when you pressed your Aqua key. Clicking elsewhere first clears the selection.
- Search fields and browser address bars always use normal dictation (see above).
- Selections longer than 6,000 characters fall back to dictation.
For more on the feature, see the announcement post.