Settings: Appearance, Media, and General

Appearance Settings

Choose System, Light, or Dark and an accent color in Settings → Appearance. These changes save immediately.

Media Settings

Settings → Media has separate interruption preferences for Option hold-to-talk and hands-free recording. Choose Save changes after editing them. Media pausing requires macOS 15 or later. On macOS 13 and 14 the settings are shown as unavailable with the reason, and your saved choice is kept for after an update.

When enabled, Steno pauses an app only when it is actually playing, and resumes it after recording stops only after seeing that pause take effect. Media you paused yourself, even a moment earlier, stays paused. It sends Pause and Play only to the app it confirmed was playing. If Steno cannot identify the playing app, it leaves playback alone. Transcription doesn't wait for the paused app to resume, and media paused for a short press resumes as soon as the press ends.

Support varies by music player, browser tab, podcast, or video. Test the player you use, including Cancel and an already-paused session. You can turn interruption off and manage playback yourself.

Known issues in Steno 1.0.1:

• Media playing in Safari is not paused during dictation. Safari plays audio through a system helper process that Steno cannot yet tie to the app.
• If you resume media and then pause it again yourself during a single dictation, it may start playing when the dictation ends.
• Where macOS doesn't report each app's playback state reliably, which was seen on macOS 15 in testing, Steno relies on a weaker signal. There, a browser video paused less than about two seconds before dictating may resume when the dictation ends.

General Settings

General includes Launch at login, Show Dock icon, and Open the setup guide, which opens the guide when you save. Save the draft to apply these preferences. Launch at login is saved as On only after macOS accepts it. If registration fails, the setting stays Off and Settings says why; if macOS needs your approval, Settings says so and offers to open Login Items. Turning Steno off in Login Items is reflected in Settings.

When To Change

Use General to control startup and visibility. Use Media if background playback interferes with your recording. Model and recording options are in Speech model and Recording.