Formatting
Pick the style every dictation gets, and give the apps that need their own something different.
Formatting is what happens to your words between Glaido hearing them and writing them down. Capitals, punctuation, tone, and anything else you want to tell it.
The Formatting screen has three sections:
| Section | What it covers |
|---|---|
| All apps | The style every dictation gets, everywhere |
| A built-in rule for your email apps and webmail | |
| Custom rules | Your own rules for the places that need their own style |
An app with no rule of its own uses All apps. An app that has one takes its style from that rule, and gets both custom prompts: the All apps one first, then its own on top.
All apps
Open it and pick a style. Every dictation follows it.
| Style | What it does |
|---|---|
| Standard | Full capitals and punctuation |
| Casual | Capitals stay, fewer full stops |
| Lowercase | No capitals, minimal punctuation |
Below the styles is Raw text. It gives you exactly what you said, with no AI cleanup. Your style still applies. Accuracy can drop and dictionary words are harder to get right, so reach for it when you want the transcript rather than a tidy version of it.
Leave Raw text off and you also get Custom prompt, your own instruction on top of the style. Keep it to one or two specific lines, like these:
- "Use British English spelling."
- "Never start a sentence with 'So'."
- "Keep sentences short."
Turning on Raw text hides Custom prompt, because a prompt needs the model and raw text skips it.
A prompt runs to 500 characters, counted under the box, and Save stays disabled while you're over. This one shapes every dictation you make, so keep it short.
Email gets its own built-in rule, because dictation in an inbox wants different handling from dictation in a chat window. Glaido starts it off on two webmail sites, Gmail (mail.google.com) and Outlook (outlook.live.com), and no apps at all. Add the places you write mail in, and remove the ones you don't, the same way you would on any other rule.
You can switch it off, but you can't delete it.
Custom rules
A custom rule is a style for particular apps and websites, instead of your default one.
Add the rule
Open Formatting and click Add rule.
Name it
Use something you'll recognize in the list, like "Chat apps" or "Writing code".
Pick where it applies
Click Add app and choose from your machine. Apps you have already dictated in come first, under Most used: up to 30 of them, drawn from your dictations of the last 90 days and filtered down to what's still installed. The rest follow under All applications.
Browsers aren't in that list, and neither is Glaido. That's what Websites is for. Add the site itself: mail.google.com, github.com.
Pick the style
Same three styles, same Raw text and Custom prompt options as All apps. A rule's custom prompt is added on top of the one on All apps, not instead of it.
Once saved, dictating in any of those apps uses the rule. Everything else keeps your All apps style.
One app, one rule
An app or website belongs to one rule. Ones already in another rule are grayed out in the picker. Hover one to see which rule has it.
Editing and deleting
Click a rule to edit it. Hover it and use the delete button to remove it; its apps go back to your All apps style.
Email has a switch, and so does every custom rule. Switching one off is the quick way to test whether it's the thing changing your text. All apps has no switch and can't be deleted, because every other rule builds on it.
Writing a good custom prompt
- Be specific. "Write in present tense" beats "make it sound better".
- Say it once. A prompt on a custom rule already inherits the one on All apps, so don't repeat it.
- Don't contradict yourself. "Be thorough" and "be brief" in the same prompt gets you neither.
- Change one thing at a time. Dictate a few sentences, read them, then adjust the wording.
If your old rules moved
Earlier versions of Glaido had a flat list of formatting rules that all applied at once.
If you had two or more, they are now one custom prompt on your All apps style, numbered "1.", "2." in the order they were in and cut off at 500 characters if the merge ran long. It still applies to every dictation. Glaido shows a notice on the Formatting screen, Your formatting rules moved, with a button that opens All apps so you can read what carried over and edit it. Close the notice and it stays closed on that computer.
If you had one, it became your All apps rule under its own name, and there is no notice, because nothing was merged.