Documentation for Windows

Installation

ahsk for Windows is a single installer. It installs for your user account only, so it never asks for an administrator password.

1. 1. Download the installer from the homepage — the file is called ahsk-windows-v<version>-setup.exe.
2. 2. Double-click it. If Windows shows “Windows protected your PC”, click More info, then Run anyway (see the note below).
3. 3. Keep Start ahsk when I sign in to Windows ticked so the shortcut is always ready. A desktop shortcut is optional.
4. 4. Click Install. ahsk launches on its own when setup finishes.

Getting Started

The first launch signs you in and walks you through every shortcut with your own microphone.

1. Sign in

Use the same account as on Mac or iPhone — email and password, or Continue with Google. New to ahsk? Create your account at ahsk.app/signup first — since 1.12 the app signs you in but doesn’t create accounts, because your email is verified during signup. Your plan follows your account. ahsk keeps you signed in between restarts.

2. Setup walkthrough

A short interactive tour. Each step waits for you to actually do it, so you leave knowing the shortcuts by feel:

• • Test your microphone — a live level meter confirms Windows is sending ahsk audio.
• • Test the shortcut — hold Ctrl + Win and say anything. You see what was heard and how it was cleaned up.
• • Go hands-free — tap Ctrl + Win + Space to see the hands-free mode.
• • Get answers and translate on the fly — introduces Ctrl + Win + A and Ctrl + Win + T.
• • Select text, get a bubble — shows the selection bubble and its Ask, Rewrite, Copy, Search and Add to dictionary actions.
• • One bar for everything — introduces the Win + Space launcher and where to hand the chord back.
• • Try it for real — dictate a sentence, then an email, then a list, and watch the formatter shape each one.

You can replay the tour any time from the tray menu: Show onboarding again.

3. Find the pill and the tray icon

After setup ahsk has no main window. Two things tell you it is running: a small dark pill at the bottom of your screen that grows into a waveform while you speak, and the ahsk icon in the notification area next to the clock (click the ^ arrow if Windows has hidden it).

4. The guide on the pill

For your first few launches a small dark callout hangs off the pill with one thing to try: hold Ctrl + Win and talk, let go, tap Ctrl + Win + Space, ask with Ctrl + Win + A. It moves on when ahsk sees you do each step — there is no Next button — and a breathing blue dot on the pill shows where to look. The × closes it for good; otherwise it retires after three launches or once every step is done.

Dictation

Dictation works in every program that accepts typed text: browsers, Word, Outlook, Slack, Teams, VS Code, Notepad, the Windows search box. Put your cursor where you want the text, then use either mode.

Push-to-talk

Press Ctrl first, then Win, and keep both held while you talk. The pill turns into a live waveform so you can see you are being heard. Release when you finish the thought — transcription takes well under a second and the text lands where your cursor was.

Hands-free

For anything longer than a sentence or two. Tap Ctrl + Win + Space once and let go: a soft blue glow around the edge of every monitor shows ahsk is listening. Speak as long as you like, pause, think, keep going. Tap Ctrl + Win to stop — everything you said is transcribed and pasted as one piece.

• • A hands-free session stops on its own after 5 minutes and pastes what it heard, so a forgotten session never runs all afternoon.
• • A coach mark appears if you keep holding Ctrl + Win for a long time — a reminder that hands-free exists.

Sounds

Three short cues, the same ones as the Mac app, tell you what happened without looking at the screen:

• • Start — ahsk is listening.
• • Paste — your text was pasted (or your answer is on screen).
• • Error — something did not work; a message under the pill says what.

Turn them off under Dashboard → Voice → Preferences → Mute sounds.

“We couldn’t hear you”

When a recording contains no speech, a dark card appears by the pill. It says why from what the mic actually delivered — nothing at all, exact silence (muted), or nothing loud enough — and has a play button with the take’s waveform so you can hear what was captured. Check Microphone takes you straight to Voice → Input. The card closes itself after ten seconds.

Nudges

One line by the pill for the moments people trip up, shown at most three times each:

• • You started dictating with nothing focused that can take text — Click a textbox, hold Ctrl + Win and say what you want ahsk to write.
• • A hands-free session ran to its limit — Hands-free stays open until you tap Ctrl + Win again.
• • During your first ten launches, a burst of typing into a text field — You could say this instead.

Messages under the pill

ahsk never fails silently. When something else goes wrong a small dark tile appears just below the pill for a few seconds:

Smart Formatting

Raw speech-to-text is not the same as written text. After transcribing, ahsk runs a quick cleanup pass on anything longer than a few words so what gets pasted reads like you typed it:

• • Punctuation and capitals — sentences, commas, question marks.
• • Fillers removed — “um”, “uh”, “you know”, repeated words.
• • Self-corrections — say “send it Tuesday, no, Thursday” and only Thursday survives.
• • Spoken symbols and code — “open paren”, “new line”, “camel case user name” become the real thing.
• • Lists and emails — “first… second… third” becomes a numbered list; a dictated email gets its greeting, body and sign-off on their own lines.

Dictation Modes

The mode is the one setting that changes what every dictation looks like, so it lives on the Dashboard’s Home as well as under Voice. Each card previews the same sentence in that mode so they compare at a glance.

Ask (Ctrl + Win + A)

Ask a question out loud and get a web-sourced answer without opening a browser. Good for a quick fact, a definition, today’s news on something, or a “how do I…” while you work.

How to use

1. 1. Tap Ctrl + Win + A. ahsk starts listening hands-free.
2. 2. Ask your question naturally.
3. 3. Tap Ctrl + Win to finish. A dark card opens out of the pill and the answer streams in, with headings, lists and source links.
4. 4. Press ↩ (or click Insert) to paste the answer at your cursor, or Esc to close the card.

On the card

• • Follow up — hold Ctrl + Win while the card is open (or click the chip), ask, let go. The whole conversation is sent, up to ten turns; the pager at the top steps back through earlier answers.
• • Copy and Regenerate — the two icons beside Insert.
• • The card never takes focus, so the cursor in your document stays where it was — Insert lands exactly there.

Meeting Notes (Ctrl + Win + R)

New in 1.14. ahsk records both sides of a meeting — your microphone and the computer’s own audio, captured digitally inside Windows — so Zoom, Teams and Meet calls are covered whether you wear headphones or not. When you stop, the recording is transcribed and organized into notes.

How to use

1. 1. Tap Ctrl + Win + R when the meeting starts (or use the tray menu’s Start meeting recording).
2. 2. While recording, a red glow frames every screen and a small REC pill with the elapsed time sits in the top corner, above every window.
3. 3. Tap Ctrl + Win + R again, click the REC pill, or use the tray menu to stop.
4. 4. The dashboard opens on the new Notes tab with the finished notes: a summary, key points, decisions, checkbox action items, a mind-map diagram, and the full transcript.

The Notes tab

• • Every meeting is listed newest first; open one to read it rendered, or click Open file for the Markdown.
• • The notes are yours on disk too: Documents\ahsk meetings.
• • Two switches control the indicators: the red screen glow and the corner REC pill.

Selection Bubble

Select text in any program — drag over it, double-click a word, or use Shift + arrows — and a small bubble appears under the pointer, the same one the Mac app shows. Five actions, left to right:

• • Ask (the ahsk icon) — ahsk starts listening. Ask your question about the selected text, tap Ctrl + Win to finish, and the answer card opens with the answer.
• • Rewrite — ahsk listens for an instruction (“make it formal”, “shorter”, “fix the grammar”). Tap Ctrl + Win to finish; the rewrite appears on the card and Insert (or ↩) pastes it over your selection.
• • Copy — copies the selection.
• • Search Google — opens a search for the selection in your browser.
• • Add to dictionary — adds the selection to your dictionary so it is spelled right from the next dictation.

The bubble goes away on its own after five seconds, when you click elsewhere, or with Esc. It never takes focus, so your selection and cursor stay exactly where they were.

If you would rather not have it, Dashboard › Shortcuts has a switch that turns the bubble off, and one per action to hide the ones you never press.

Launcher (Win + Space)

Tap Win + Space anywhere and a search bar drops in near the top of the screen — the Windows counterpart of the Mac app’s Cmd + Space launcher. Type, pick a row with the arrow keys, press ↩. Esc or clicking away closes it.

Folders to search. Out of the box find covers your own folders — Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Videos, Music and OneDrive. If your work lives somewhere else, a projects drive or a second disk, add it under the Dashboard’sLauncher tab, in Folders to search. ahsk also asks Windows to index what you add, so a word that appears inside a document finds the file and not just its name; each row says which of the two is active for that folder.

Translate (Ctrl + Win + T)

Speak in one language and paste in another. Set the pair once in the Dashboard and the shortcut does the rest — handy for replying to colleagues abroad or writing in a language you read better than you write.

How to use

1. 1. Open the Dashboard → Voice tab and choose your input language (the one you speak) and output language (the one you want pasted). Since 1.11 the setup tour asks for both, so they are usually already set.
2. 2. Put your cursor where the text should go and tap Ctrl + Win + T. ahsk listens hands-free.
3. 3. Speak, then tap Ctrl + Win to finish. The translation is pasted at your cursor.

Languages

Both input and output can be any of: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Hindi, Arabic, Turkish, Polish.

Dictionary

Names, brands, acronyms and jargon are where speech recognition guesses wrong. Add them to your dictionary and ahsk passes them to the transcriber as context on every dictation, so “Kubernetes”, “HiQ” or a colleague’s surname come out spelled right.

How to use

1. 1. Open the Dashboard → Dictionary in the sidebar (it is the Voice tab scrolled to its dictionary section). Or select a word anywhere and pick Add to dictionary on the bubble.
2. 2. Type a word or short phrase and click Add. Remove an entry with the × beside it.
3. 3. That is it — the next dictation already uses the updated list. It applies to plain dictation, Ask and Translate alike.
4. 4. The dictionary belongs to your account: words you added on the Mac or iPhone are here already, and what you add on Windows shows up there.

Snippets

A snippet is a keyword that turns into a block of text as you type it. Type a semicolon, the keyword and a space in any program — ;mail, ;sig, ;ty — and the keyword is taken back out and the saved text is pasted in its place. It works everywhere your dictation does, and nothing has to be selected first.

Yours to change

1. 1. Open the Dashboard → Snippets in the sidebar. Fourteen come with the app — ;mail, ;reply, ;meeting, ;intro, ;email, ;phone, ;addr, ;sig, ;date, ;time, ;ty, ;otw, ;lgtm, ;brb.
2. 2. New snippet takes a keyword, a name and the text. Click a row to edit it, or the × to delete it.
3. 3. Put {date}, {time} or {clipboard} anywhere in the text and they are filled in as it is pasted.
4. 4. The switch at the top of the page turns typing expansion off, if you would rather only use them from the launcher.

The launcher knows them too: press Win + Space, type ; and pick one to paste it where you were.

Download Video

Press Ctrl + Shift + D anywhere and a panel opens with the link you last copied already filled in. Pick a quality, press Download, and the file lands in your Videos folder. It is in the tray menu too, as Download video.

1. 1. Copy a video link — YouTube and hundreds of other sites work.
2. 2. Ctrl + Shift + D. The link is already there; paste one yourself if it is not.
3. 3. Choose Best, 1080p, 720p or 480p, or M4A / MP3 for audio only.
4. 4. Change… picks a different folder and it is remembered. Show in folder opens it when the download finishes.

ahsk keeps its own copy of the downloader and updates it quietly in the background, which is what keeps it working when a site changes something. The very first download fetches it, so that one takes a few seconds longer.

Where Your Text Goes

ahsk pastes into whatever had keyboard focus when you started the shortcut. It does this by briefly placing your text on the clipboard and sending Ctrl + V, then putting your previous clipboard contents back — whatever they were, text, image or file — so dictation never costs you something you copied earlier.

When there is nowhere to paste

Two cases where the text is left on the clipboard instead, with a tile telling you so:

• • No text field is focused — for example the desktop or a read-only page. Click into a field and press Ctrl + V.
• • The window runs as administrator — Windows does not let normal programs type into elevated ones (Task Manager, an admin PowerShell, some installers). Press Ctrl + V there yourself.

Dashboard

The Dashboard is the app’s only window, laid out the same way as the Mac app. Open it from the tray icon (Open ahsk) or by launching ahsk again from the Start menu — a second launch just brings it up. Closing it hides it; ahsk keeps running. It is light or dark to match your Windows app mode.

Sidebar

• • Home, then a Settings group with Voice, Dictionary, Launcher, Snippets and Shortcuts.
• • At the foot: the update pill (click to check, or to install when a version is waiting), the plan card with your free-words progress and Upgrade, and your name — click it for Account.

Home

• • The hero card — words dictated, your pace (the median of recent dictations, so one open mic cannot drag it down), time saved against typing at 40 wpm, and your day streak. The chip in the corner is the mode you are dictating in.
• • Get started — six tasks judged from what you have already done; the strip disappears once they are all ticked.
• • Dictation mode — the same cards as under Voice; click one to switch.
• • History — every dictation grouped by day (Today, Yesterday, then dates), with a search box and a copy button on each row.

Voice

• • Output language — the language your transcription comes out in (and the language you speak). Used as an accuracy hint for every dictation.
• • Translation mode — what Ctrl + Win + T pastes in.
• • Input — the microphone ahsk records with. Automatic (the default) picks a wired mic first, then the built-in, Bluetooth last, and switches when you plug one in or pull it out — the Mac rule. Or pin a specific one; ahsk falls back to automatic if it disappears. Plus the pill position, top or bottom of the screen.
• • Preferences — Mute sounds.
• • Voice modes — Informal, Formal, Mail and your own. See Dictation Modes.
• • Custom dictionary — words the transcriber should know how to spell. See Dictionary.

Shortcuts

Every chord with what it does. They are fixed in this version.

Account

• • Your name and email, your plan with words used and an Upgrade (or Manage plan) button.
• • Contact support, Open data folder, Open logs folder and Sign out. Signing out runs the setup tour again on next sign-in.

Tray Menu

Right-click the ahsk icon in the notification area (next to the clock):

Keyboard Shortcuts

Almost every shortcut starts with Ctrl + Win, pressed Ctrl first. The exception is the downloader: Windows keeps Ctrl + Win + D for virtual desktops, so it is Ctrl + Shift + D. They work in any program and cannot be changed in this version.

A reminder you can speak instead. After eight characters typed in a row, a small note appears beside the pill pointing out you could hold Ctrl + Win and say it. It keeps turning up rather than stopping after your first few days — that is when people forget ahsk is running. Turn it off for good under the Dashboard’s Shortcuts tab, inReminders.

Plan

Two plans, the same on every platform:

Words are counted from the day the free allowance reached your account, so nothing you dictated before it counts against you. Your progress is on the sidebar’s plan card and under Account; when the allowance is used up a card beside the pill says so — with the same sound as any other press that goes nowhere — and Upgrade to Pro on it opens pricing.

Updates

ahsk checks for a new version at launch, every six hours while running, and when your PC wakes from sleep. When one is available the pill at the foot of the Dashboard’s sidebar turns blue and reads Update available. Clicking it any other time checks again.

From 1.9 on, clicking it is the whole update. ahsk downloads the new version itself — the pill counts it up — installs it, and relaunches. There is no browser download, no wizard to click through, and no “Windows protected your PC” warning, because the file never passes through a browser. Your sign-in, history, dictionary and settings are all kept.

System Requirements

• • Windows 10 (version 1809) or Windows 11, 64-bit.
• • Arm PCs (Snapdragon / Copilot+) run the same build under Windows’ built-in emulation. It works; the microphone takes about half a second longer to open.
• • A microphone — the Windows default input device. Built-in, USB and Bluetooth mics all work; ahsk follows the default if you switch.
• • Microphone access for desktop apps enabled in Settings → Privacy & security → Microphone.
• • An internet connection — transcription, formatting, Ask and Translate run on our servers.

Everything the app needs ships inside the installer; there is no separate .NET or runtime to install.

Privacy

• • Audio is never stored. A recording exists only in memory for the moment it takes to transcribe it, then it is gone. Nothing is written to disk.
• • Your history stays on your PC — transcriptions and stats live in %LocalAppData%\ahsk. Use Clear all in the Dashboard to wipe them.
• • Your clipboard is yours. ahsk restores whatever was on it after every paste, and its own pastes are not added to Windows clipboard history.
• • Minimal account data — we store your email, plan and usage counts. Your sign-in token is encrypted with Windows’ own data protection so only your user account can read it.
• • Never used for training — your speech, text and questions are never used to train AI models.

Troubleshooting