Command mode takes the text you have selected plus a spoken instruction, and replaces the selection with the result. "Make this more concise", "turn this into bullet points", "fix the grammar".

Two ways in

Hotkey — Alt+Shift+C, or ⌥⇧C on macOS
Voice — say {wake} command, for example "Annika command"

ⓘ

The spoken form is matched strictly: the wake word, then the word "command", then nothing meaningful after it. Say "Annika command, make this shorter" and the trailing words push it down a different path — trigger it first, then speak the instruction.

How your selection is captured

This is the part that varies by platform, and it explains most of the odd behaviour people hit.

Platform	Method
Windows	Accessibility APIs first, with a 250 ms budget. If the app does not expose its text, it falls back to a simulated copy.
macOS · Linux	Always a simulated copy.

The fallback is careful about it: your clipboard is backed up, cleared, then copied into, and restored afterwards. Clearing first matters — without it, a failed copy would silently hand the model whatever you copied an hour ago.

Editors built on web technology — VS Code and other Electron apps — do not expose text through the accessibility route, so they always take the clipboard path. It works, but it is the slower of the two.

✺

If command mode returns your text unchanged, the selection was probably empty. With nothing selected, there is nothing to rewrite and the original is passed straight through.

The follow-up window

After any completed command or dictation, InkSpoke stays listening for a follow-up for 60 seconds so you can chain instructions without repeating the wake word. A countdown notification shows while it is open; clicking it closes the window.

During that window you can say "cancel" to close it, the wake word alone to start fresh dictation, or {wake} command to open command mode again.

✺

If the wake word seems to go deaf for about a minute after a mis-heard command, this window is why. Say "cancel" to close it immediately.

Stopping injection mid-flight

While text is being typed, say {name} stop — for example "Annika stop" — to abort. A bare "stop" deliberately does not match, since it is far too common a word to hand that power to.

Command mode: edit text by voice

Two ways in

How your selection is captured

The follow-up window

Stopping injection mid-flight

Keep going.

Custom commands: a phrase becomes an action

Commands with a spoken parameter