Desktop quick start

1. Install

2. First-run onboarding

Launching Amical for the first time walks you through five screens:

1. Welcome — pick the features you're interested in (Contextual Dictation, Note Taking; Meeting Transcriptions and Voice Commands are listed but marked coming soon).
2. Permissions — grant microphone access. On macOS, also grant accessibility access so Amical can paste into other apps. The screen polls every 2 seconds and unlocks Continue once everything is granted.
3. Discovery source — tells the team how you found Amical. Pick one of the seven options.
4. Model selection — choose Cloud (sign in, free, fast, no setup) or Local (Whisper on your machine, private, offline). Amical shows a recommendation based on your hardware. You complete a short setup for whichever you pick.
5. Completion — confirm your microphone, set your push-to-talk shortcut, and join the Discord if you want.

3. Dictate

Hold your push-to-talk key (set during onboarding; default is Fn on Mac), say something into any app's text field, release. The text appears.

For longer passes, use the hands-free shortcut (default Fn+Space) to start a session, talk freely, and press it again to stop. The floating pill on your desktop also starts hands-free recording — click it once.

4. Where to next

• Customize your shortcuts: see Custom hotkeys
• Add words Amical keeps mishearing: see Custom vocabulary
• Pick a different speech model: see Local AI models or Cloud AI models