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Murmur docs

Last updated April 30, 2026 · v1.1.0

Everything you need to get fluent with Murmur in an afternoon. Most of it you'll never read — the app is designed to fade out of your way — but when something does need explaining, it lives here.

Quick start

Download Murmur, run the installer, and launch it. The first-run wizard walks you through four steps: welcome, provider and API key, hotkey capture, and done. The whole thing takes under a minute if your key is on hand.

• Pick a provider. Groq (whisper-large-v3) or Google Gemini (2.5 flash). You bring your own key.
• Pick a hotkey. Press Capture in the wizard, then press whatever key you want to use. Any key works — even the Copilot key, mouse thumb buttons, or unnamed media keys.
• Speak. Hold the key and talk. Release. Your words type themselves wherever your cursor is.

Voice commands

Voice commands let you punctuate, break lines, and add structure without taking your hands off the keyboard or trailing in "period" as literal text. Murmur recognizes commands at word boundaries only, so saying "period drama" will not insert a full stop. Available everywhere, free, on by default.

Say	You get
new line	Line break
new paragraph	Blank line, next sentence capitalized
period / full stop	.
comma	,
question mark	?
exclamation point / exclamation mark	!
colon	:
semicolon	;
open quote	“
close quote	”
open paren / open parenthesis	(
close paren / close parenthesis	)
dash	—
hyphen	-
bullet point	New line starting with •
tab	Tab character

Custom dictionary

Open Settings → Dictionary to add terms the model keeps mishearing — product names, coworkers, jargon, acronyms. Each entry is a target word or phrase plus an optional list of common mishearings. Murmur applies them after transcription and before the text is typed, so corrections cost no extra latency.

Examples that pull weight in real-world use:

• Proper nouns: Anthropic, Kubernetes, Postgres.
• Coworker names the model tends to flatten into a common word.
• Acronyms you say as initials (SLO, RBAC) that come back lowercased.
• Internal product names that don't appear in any training set.

The dictionary is stored locally per user. It is never synced (unless you're on Pro with cloud sync enabled) and never sent to any provider in isolation.

Hotkeys

Open Settings → Hotkeys → Capture, then press the key you want. Murmur learns both the logical name (F23, Copilot) and the raw scan code, so even keys Windows doesn't formally recognize will bind. You can configure two hotkeys at once: one for Hold mode and one for Toggle.

Tips on which keys work well:

• Function keys you don't otherwise use — F13 through F24 are common picks because nothing else claims them.
• The Copilot key on newer laptops, once the stock Windows shortcut is disabled (see Troubleshooting).
• Mouse side buttons bound to a custom keycode by your mouse software.
• Avoid binding to keys with system roles — Win, Alt, modifiers in isolation. Murmur will accept them, but Windows tends to react in ways you don't want.

AI rewrite modes

The rewrite menu (Pro) takes your transcribed text and runs it back through your provider's chat model with a style instruction. The output replaces what would have been typed. Useful when you've dictated a draft and want a tone shift before it lands.

• Formal. Tightens contractions, adds register, removes filler. Good for client email and policy.
• Casual. Loosens it up. Reads like a Slack message from a thoughtful coworker.
• Concise. Cuts ruthlessly. Same meaning, half the words.
• Email. Adds a subject-line-friendly opening, organizes paragraphs, signs off.

Rewrites use the chat model from the provider you've already configured (Groq llama-3.3-70b or Gemini 2.0 Flash). No new vendor, no new key.

Accuracy review

Pure speech-to-text models miss a predictable set of things: homophones (their/there), misheard proper nouns, dropped negations (the difference between "I do" and "I don't"), and garbled technical words. Accuracy review is a second pass: a quick LLM call that reads the transcript like a careful editor and patches those errors before the text lands.

It is not a style rewrite. It preserves your voice, your cadence, your structure.

Three modes:

• Never. Off entirely. Pure transcription.
• Sometimes. Runs only on recordings at or above your length threshold — default 60 seconds, configurable. Short remarks skip the round-trip.
• Always. Every dictation gets reviewed.

Tray and quitting

Closing the Murmur window doesn't close the app — it tucks it into the system tray, where it keeps listening for your hotkey. The tray icon's right-click menu has Show window, the current mode (Smart / Hold / Toggle), and Quit.

If you want Murmur to launch silently at login, run start.bat from the Startup folder (shell:startup). It launches without a console window, and the tray icon is the only sign Murmur is alive.

Troubleshooting

The Copilot key opens the stock Copilot launcher instead of Murmur.

Windows intercepts the Copilot key first. Disable the stock binding under Settings → Personalization → Text input, or remap the key with PowerToys Keyboard Manager to a code Murmur can capture cleanly (e.g. F23). After that, Murmur's hotkey capture will see the key.

Ctrl+V doesn't paste the transcript into some apps.

A small set of apps (notably some terminals and Electron-based games) ignore the standard paste input that Murmur sends. Workaround: switch the typing strategy in Settings → Advanced from paste to type. The app will then synthesize keystrokes character by character — slightly slower, but universally accepted.

ARM64 caveats.

Murmur runs natively on Windows on ARM. The Groq path is fully supported. The Gemini path depends on grpcio, which doesn't yet ship ARM64 wheels for Python 3.13. If you're on ARM and want to use Gemini, either downgrade the embedded Python or stick with Groq until upstream wheels ship. The installer steers you toward Groq by default on ARM.

Murmur is not capturing my mic.

Check Windows microphone permissions: Settings → Privacy & security → Microphone and make sure desktop apps are allowed. Then in Murmur, open Settings → Audio and pick the correct input device explicitly (the default device sometimes changes when headphones connect).

My transcript appeared in the wrong window.

Murmur types into whichever window has keyboard focus when you release the hotkey. If you alt-tab while holding the key, the destination changes. Stay in the target window until you let go.

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