Talk to Lila

Hold Space to talk

Hold Space or the mic button, speak, and let go to send. It’s on by default, and the keyboard button under the message box turns it on and off.

• A clip can last from 0.3 to 30 seconds. Your speech is turned into text on your computer.
• Space won’t start it while your cursor is in the message box or a box is open on screen. Click an empty part of her window first.
• She uses your computer’s default microphone. To use a different one, change the default in your computer’s sound settings.

Type to her

Type in the “What’s on your mind?” box and press Enter. Typing while she talks interrupts her.

Talk hands-freeEarly

Press Hands-free and the microphone stays on until you press it again. She sends after a 0.7-second pause, or waits 2.2 seconds if you trail off on “um” or “and”. To send yourself instead, untick “Send after a pause in hands-free mode” in Settings > Voice and microphone > Hands-free and Hey Lila.

Say “Hey Lila”Early

Press Hey Lila (next to Hands-free) and she listens for her name: “Hey Lila, set a timer for ten minutes.” Her name on its own gives a chime and a few seconds to speak. Just after she answers, you can follow up without her name.

• Ctrl+Alt+Space (Cmd+Shift+Space on a Mac) brings her forward from any app, listening for one request.
• With Hey Lila on, closing her window leaves her running in the tray (the small icons near the clock). Use her tray icon to reopen or quit her.
• Her hearing transcribes continuously on your computer and acts only on what starts with her name. The rest is ignored and not sent. It isn’t a low-power listener, so the microphone and hearing model run the whole time.

Interrupt her

Talk over her, press Space, type, or press Stop. Space, typing and Stop are the dependable ways.

Talking over her works well with headphones. Without them it’s early: in tests it worked 56% of the time, and not at all when her voice reached the microphone as loudly as yours. Headphones keep her voice out of your microphone, as the app says: “Use headphones to interrupt Lila by speaking.”

Stop her

Press Stop, or say or type “stop”, “Lila stop”, “cancel that” or “stop all actions”. Stop cancels her speech, actions waiting for your OK, file transfers, screen capture, and background jobs like Codex builds, computer use and games.

• Stop can’t undo something already done. A saved event stays saved, and your timers and reminders stay set.
• On Windows, F8 is a narrower emergency key: it cancels desktop actions, screen capture, hearing and game control, not everything. Use Stop.
• “Be quiet” doesn’t stop a task; it turns off check-ins.

Read her subtitles

Her words appear under the waveform as she says them, with the spoken ones lit up. Replay (the circular arrow) plays her last line again.

Background-noise removalEarly

“Remove background noise from the microphone” (in Settings > Voice and microphone > Microphone and speakers) is on by default and cleans the sound on your computer before her hearing gets it. Her hearing gets the cleaned sound with half the original mixed back in, because fully cleaned sound made her mishear more. Changes apply the next time the microphone turns on.

Choose where her voice plays

Voice output, in Settings > Voice and microphone > Microphone and speakers, picks your speakers or headphones.