Everything Kudu does
What happens between you speaking and the text appearing, and how to shape it.
Cleanup, always on
These run on every dictation, instantly, with no model and no network.
| You say | Kudu writes |
|---|---|
| “um, so I think, uh, we’re ready” | So I think we’re ready. |
| “book the red, no wait, blue room” | Book the blue room. |
| “see you Tuesday or rather Wednesday” | See you Wednesday. |
| “that’s wrong. scratch that. it’s right” | It’s right. |
| “first item new line second item” | First item Second item |
| “meet at three thirty pm” | Meet at 3:30 pm. |
| “open user service dot ts” | Open userService.ts |
| “can you tag Sakshi” | Can you @Sakshi |
Each can be turned off in Style.
Smart formatting
For longer dictations, lists, numbers, emails and code, Kudu also uses a language model to lay the text out: spoken lists become bullets under a heading, amounts and units become digits (2 kg, $12,000, 15%), spoken math becomes notation, emails get a greeting and a sign-off, and in code editors and terminals symbols and file names are written the way code does.
It never changes what you said: if the model rewords, answers or drops anything, Kudu throws its output away and keeps the cleaned-up text.
- Mac: Apple Intelligence (macOS 26). Kudu formats while you speak, so the text is ready almost as soon as you let go.
- Windows and Linux: an optional small model (Qwen2.5 0.5B or 1.5B) from Settings → Smart formatting.
Editing strength
| Verbatim | Exactly what you said, with fillers removed. Fastest. |
|---|---|
| Light | Adds punctuation, paragraphs, lists and numbers. Keeps your words. The default. |
| Polished | Also smooths false starts and repetition for cleaner prose. |
Styles per app
Kudu knows which kind of app you're in, and writes the way you'd write there. Pick a style for personal messages, work messages, email and everything else:
| Formal | Sounds good. See you at 3. |
|---|---|
| Casual | Sounds good. See you at 3 |
| Very casual | sounds good. see you at 3 |
Dictionary and learning
Add names, brands and jargon to the Dictionary, optionally with the ways the speech model tends to mishear them (“coo doo” → Kudu). Kudu also learns on its own: if you fix a word right after dictating, it notices, saves the spelling and shows “✦ saved to dictionary” with an Undo button. Learned words are marked with ✦.
Kudu also reads the names and terms visible in the window you're dictating into, and spells a misheard word the way it appears on screen (“Sidarth” → Siddharth).
Snippets
Save text you type often (your email, a calendar link, an address, a sign-off) with a trigger phrase. Say the trigger on its own and Kudu types the snippet. Placeholders: {date}, {time} and {clipboard}.
Command mode
Select text, hold the Command shortcut and say what to do with it. With nothing selected, say what to write. Examples: “make this more formal”, “shorter”, “fix the grammar”, “turn this into a list”, “write a polite reply saying I'll be late”.
History and Insights
The Home page keeps your recent dictations, searchable, with copy and paste-again. Insights shows your words per minute, words cleaned up, total words with this month's change, where you dictate most, and a streak heat map. History is kept for 90 days by default (30 days, 90 days or forever).