Hotkey not working
You hold the Voibe hotkey, speak, release — and nothing happens. In the vast majority of cases this is Accessibility permission silently dropping after a macOS update or a permission reset.
Work through the fixes below in order. Most users are sorted by step 1.
30-second checks first
- Voibe wave icon visible in your menu bar?
- Cursor is blinking inside a text field, not on a button or empty desktop?
- You're holding the right key — defaults to Fn?
Toggle Accessibility permission off and back on
This is the fix nine times out of ten. macOS occasionally drops Accessibility grants without removing the app from the list, leaving the toggle on but the actual permission dead.
- 1. Open System Settings › Privacy & Security › Accessibility.
- 2. Find Voibe in the list and toggle it off.
- 3. Toggle it back on. macOS may prompt for your password.
- 4. Quit Voibe (menu bar icon › Quit) and relaunch from Applications.
- 5. Test the hotkey in any text field.
See Permissions for the full explanation of what Accessibility access lets Voibe do.
Confirm Voibe is actually running
The hotkey only works while Voibe is running. Look for the wave-shaped V icon at the top right of your screen.
- If the icon's missing, launch Voibe from Applications or Spotlight.
- If your menu bar is crowded, the icon may be hidden behind the notch on newer MacBooks. Hold ⌘ and drag menu bar icons to reorder.
- To avoid this in future, enable Launch at login in Voibe's settings.
See Menu Bar App for everything you can do from the icon.
Rule out a hotkey conflict
Other apps can claim the same key. The usual suspects: Karabiner-Elements, BetterTouchTool, Raycast, Alfred, Loop, and macOS dictation itself bound to the same hotkey.
- 1. Open Voibe's settings (menu bar › Show Dashboard).
- 2. Change the hotkey to something else — Right Option or ⌃⇧Space are reliable.
- 3. Test in a text field.
- 4. If it works on the new key, the original key was claimed by another app. Switch back if you want, after disabling the conflict.
Check System Settings › Keyboard › Keyboard Shortcuts › Dictation if you suspect Apple's built-in dictation is intercepting the key.
Make sure your cursor is in a text field
Voibe types into the focused text input. If your cursor isn't blinking inside a text field — say, you clicked on a button, an empty area of the desktop, or a read-only surface — the hotkey will appear to do nothing because there's nowhere to deliver the text.
Click once into a text field (Notes, a chat input, a search bar) before holding the hotkey. If you hear the audio cue but text doesn't appear, use the menu bar's Paste Last Transcript item (⌃⌥V) to recover what you said.
Still not working?
- If you hear no audio cue when holding the hotkey, the issue is microphone, not hotkey — see No Audio Detected.
- Restart your Mac. Sounds trite; sometimes resolves stuck input monitoring permissions.
- Email hi@getvoibe.com with your macOS version and which hotkey you're using.