Skip to main content
OpenWhispr works in any application that accepts typed text: your email client, a chat window, a document, a code editor, a browser form. There’s no list of supported apps to check, because it isn’t integrating with them — it’s putting text where your cursor already is. Knowing how it does that explains every case where it doesn’t.

What actually happens

When you finish dictating, OpenWhispr:
  1. Copies the finished text to your clipboard.
  2. Sends the paste keystroke to whichever window has focus.
  3. Puts your previous clipboard contents back a moment later.
That’s it. Nothing is typed character by character, and nothing is injected into the other application. Two consequences worth knowing:
  • Your clipboard is borrowed, not taken. It’s restored afterwards — unless it changed in the meantime, in which case OpenWhispr leaves the newer contents alone rather than overwriting something you copied.
  • Focus decides everything. The text lands wherever the cursor is when dictation finishes. Click into the target field before you stop speaking, not after.

The two settings

Both are under SettingsPreferences under App, in the Clipboard group: Turn automatic pasting off and OpenWhispr becomes copy-only: dictate, then paste where you like. Some people prefer that in apps where they want to review before committing.

What each platform needs

When the paste doesn’t land

The transcription worked and the paste didn’t. Press Cmd/Ctrl+V — the text is on your clipboard, which is the deliberate fallback for every failure in this path. Then see the text doesn’t paste for the cause.
Whatever had focus when dictation ended received the text. This most often happens when a notification or another app steals focus mid-dictation.
A known issue with a specific cause on Windows rather than something about the app you were in. The text pasted twice has it.
Terminals use a different paste shortcut, and OpenWhispr switches to it when it recognises one. Editors, IDEs and terminals covers what it recognises and what to do when yours isn’t on the list.
That’s the voice agent, not the paste path. It answers instead of typing explains the trigger and how to turn it off.

Fields that refuse pasted text

Some secure entry fields reject text that arrives from a paste, whatever is doing the pasting. That’s the other application’s decision, not something OpenWhispr can work around — and not something we’d want to. The transcription stays on your clipboard either way.