General settings
Settings → General is the home for how you start dictation, what happens when Kalam launches, how the app looks, and whether you hear sounds or see system notifications. Open Settings from the sidebar or the system tray, then choose the General tab.
What you see
Collapsible sections on this tab:
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Voice actions
- Startup
- Appearance
- Notifications & sounds
Keyboard shortcuts
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Hold to Dictate | Press and hold to start dictating; release to stop. |
| Toggle Dictation | Press once to start, press again to stop. |
| Recording shortcut behavior | Which shortcuts are active: Hold, Toggle, or Both. You can still assign both keys above. |
| Minimum hold time | How long (in ms) you must hold the dictation shortcut before recording starts (0–2000 ms). Helps avoid accidental starts. |
| Toggle Language | Swap the active profile’s primary and secondary recognition languages. |
| Voice editing | Highlight text first, then hold this shortcut and speak an edit instruction. Uses your active mode’s language model. Available when Kalam can read the selection (Windows only). |
Set Recording shortcut behavior to Both if you want a hold key for quick phrases and a toggle key for longer dictation.
Voice actions
While dictating with the same hotkey, you can speak a voice action instead of inserting into the focused app. Full list: Voice actions.
| Phrase | Result |
|---|---|
| new note / save note / remember this | Adds to Notes instead of typing into the focused app |
| online search / search for / look up / ask google | Opens a web search (DuckDuckGo, Google, Bing, or Yahoo) |
| youtube / maps / ask perplexity | Search those sites |
| go to / open website | Open an http(s) URL |
| copy this / copy that | Copy to the clipboard |
| press enter / press return | Type the rest, then Return (off until you enable it here) |
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Press Enter | When an utterance ends with “press enter” or “press return”, type then send Return. Default off. |
| Default search | Engine for “online search”, “search for”, and “look up”: DuckDuckGo, Google, Bing, or Yahoo. “Ask google” always uses Google. |
See also Hotkeys and voice.
Startup
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Launch at Login | Start Kalam automatically when you log in to your computer. |
| Show Window on Startup | Open the main window when the app starts; otherwise start in the system tray only. |
| Setup wizard | Re-run setup wizard walks through first-launch setup again (account, permissions, shortcuts). Does not wipe your data by itself. |
Closing the main window does not quit Kalam. The app keeps running in the system tray so hotkeys still work.
Appearance
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Theme | Auto follows your system; Dark and Light stay fixed. |
Floating dictation pill options (position, waveform, idle behavior) live on the Pill page with a live preview — use Open Pill → from this section when shown.
Notifications & sounds
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Sound effects | Tones when dictation starts and stops, plus the background startup chime. |
| Error notifications | System notifications for update check failures and setup hints. |
| Completion notifications | Brief notice when dictated text is inserted successfully. |
| Update available | Notify after startup when a new version is found (install from Settings → About). |