Dictations & history
Every dictation is saved on your Mac, on the Dictations page. Replay, copy, re-run, translate or delete it, set it to clear itself and see your hours.
The Dictations page
Every dictation lands on the Dictations page, the Dictations row in the sidebar. Dictations are saved on your Mac and, where encrypted backup is switched on for your account, in your encrypted backup. Audio is never backed up. More in Privacy settings.
Each row shows the time, the length and the text. Hover a row for its actions:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Play | Plays the audio. Shown when the recording was saved. |
| Copy | Puts the text back on your clipboard. |
| Transcribe (the arrows icon) | Makes a new version with a translation or a persona, or transcribes the audio again in place of the original. See Languages & translation. |
| Delete | Removes the dictation, with an Undo toast in case you slip. |
Delete All at the top of the page clears the whole list. It asks first, and unlike a single row it can’t be undone. There’s no PDF export for dictations: Copy is how text leaves the page.
A new account shows “No recordings yet. Press your hotkey to start.”
Translations stack as versions
A row’s text is the original: what Cluinn typed when you dictated, after your persona’s clean-up. Translate it, or rewrite it with a persona, and the result is saved as its own version beside the original, with a small pager (“1 of 2 · Original”) to flip between them.
Original language works differently: it transcribes the audio again and replaces the original with the new transcript, without a persona or a translation. Versions you already made are kept, and the pager goes back to the original.
Keep less, automatically
Two controls in Settings → Dictation, under Recordings:
- Save recordings: whether the audio is kept with each transcript.
- Delete automatically: after 7, 30, 90 or 180 days, after a year or Off (keep forever). It removes both the audio and the text.
Cluinn clears old dictations when it starts, and only once a dictation’s calendar month has ended (and, where encrypted backup is switched on for your account, once that month has been backed up). So “after 7 days” means “no sooner than 7 days”, not “on the seventh”.
New installs start at After 90 days. If you’ve been keeping everything, Cluinn offers the 90-day setting once, in a toast. It never changes the setting without you.
Usage and your hours
Your dictation totals are on the Usage sheet: click your account chip at the bottom of the sidebar and choose Usage. It’s a sheet of its own, not a Settings tab, with a Transcribe tab and a Calls tab over Today, Week, Month, Year or a Custom range.
Dictation comes with a monthly pool of hours and a daily ceiling, both far above normal use. Cluinn mentions them only once you’ve used 80% of the month’s pool. If you run out, everything you recorded stays available, and the hours come back on the 1st; the daily ceiling clears the next day. The figures are in the fair-use section of our Terms, and the details are in Usage.