Hotkeys, and how to change them
Eight shortcuts do the everyday work. If one of them clashes with a program you already use, changing it takes about ten seconds.
Speakybara is driven by global hotkeys: four to take a capture (to listen, to copy, to ask the AI, or to choose afterwards), one to read the clipboard, and three for playback. They work in every app, because Speakybara reads pixels rather than a document.
The defaults below are what you get after installing. On a Mac the same combinations use Control and Option instead of Ctrl and Alt. Every one of them can be changed or switched off, and the app checks your choice before it accepts it.
The defaults
As shipped. Nothing here is locked.
| What it does | Keys |
|---|---|
| Drag a frame and listen | CtrlAltS |
| Drag a frame and copy the text | CtrlAltE |
| Drag a frame and hear the AI explain it | CtrlAltU |
| Drag a frame and choose afterwards | CtrlAltQ |
| Read the clipboard aloud | CtrlAltC |
| Pause or resume | CtrlAltP |
| Stop | CtrlAltX |
| Read the last text again | CtrlAltR |
Changing one
Step 1
Open Settings › Shortcuts
Open Speakybara (click the tray icon), choose Settings in the sidebar and then Shortcuts. The page lists every hotkey in two groups, Capture and Reading aloud, each with a switch, the key field and an arrow.
Step 2
Click the field you want to change
The field turns blue and counts down from 8. During those seconds Speakybara listens directly at Windows, so keys that other programs normally swallow still arrive. Those keystrokes go nowhere else.
The countdown exists so your keyboard is never left in a listening state. Esc stops it immediately. On a Mac there is no countdown: click the field again or press Esc.
Step 3
Press the combination you want
That is the whole interaction: nothing to type, nothing to save. The new combination is written straight into your settings.
Step 4
Let it check your choice
Speakybara refuses a combination without Ctrl, Alt, Shift or Win, because a bare key would fire while you type. It also tells you when another Speakybara function already uses the combination, and when another program has claimed it.
Worth knowing
- Ctrl+Alt+E is the quiet one: it puts the recognised text on your clipboard without reading anything aloud.
- The switch in front of each field turns that hotkey off. The combination is then free for other programs, and Speakybara remembers it for when you switch it back on.
- In the row Capture and ask AI to, you choose whether Ctrl+Alt+U has the AI explain the text or summarize it. You hear the answer instead of the text.
- Ctrl+Alt+R reads the last text again. Repeated sentences come from the local cache, so with an online voice they cost no characters.
- For step-by-step plans there are two more: Ctrl+Alt+, (comma) and Ctrl+Alt+. (period) go one step, or one sentence, back and forward from any program. Ctrl+Alt+F turns Focus on and off; the Mac has no Focus, but Control+Option+B hides and shows its subtitle bar.
- The tray menu shows the capture commands with their hotkeys next to them, which helps while you are still learning them. Esc closes the selection frame if you change your mind halfway through dragging.
If something goes wrong
First check that its switch under Settings › Shortcuts is on. If it is, another program has claimed the same combination and got there first: pick a different one; Speakybara reports a conflict when it can detect one. Games and remote-desktop clients are the usual suspects.
Because a global hotkey fires everywhere, including inside your text editor. Without Ctrl, Alt, Shift or Win, a single letter would trigger a screen capture every time you typed it, so Speakybara does not accept one.
Yes. The arrow at the end of each row puts that hotkey back to its default, the one in the table above: Ctrl+Alt+S for listening, Ctrl+Alt+E for copying, and so on.