Edit Selection: rewrite selected text by saying the change
Select some text in any app, hold the right Shift key, say what you want done to it, and let go. The rewrite replaces the selection in place, and one ⌘Z puts the original back.
What is Edit Selection for?
Dictation writes new text. Edit Selection changes text that is already there, following an instruction you speak: "make it shorter", "turn this into bullet points", "friendlier", "reply saying I can't make Tuesday, suggest Thursday".
It is not the same job as Correct Selection. Correct Selection fixes grammar, spelling and punctuation with the smallest change it can, and you say nothing. Edit Selection does what you ask, which can mean a different length, a different structure, or a new piece of text drafted from the one you selected.
How do I edit a selection by voice?
- Select the text. A sentence, a paragraph, a whole email draft - up to 4,000 characters, roughly 600 English words.
- Hold the right Shift key. After about a third of a second the recording starts and the HUD turns amber, with a pencil. That short wait is deliberate: a Shift pressed to type a capital letter does not trigger it.
- Say the change. Speak it the way you would ask a colleague. The instruction is transcribed and read by the model as intent, so a small mishearing in it rarely matters.
- Let go. While the model works, the HUD shows what it understood you to say, which is the quickest way to spot a misheard instruction. Then the rewrite is pasted over the selection.
If nothing is selected, nothing happens at all: no sound, no HUD, no recording. That is by design, and it is also the first thing to check when the key seems dead.
Instructions that work well
- Length: "make it shorter", "cut this to two sentences", "expand this a little".
- Shape: "turn this into bullet points", "make this a numbered list", "one paragraph".
- Tone: "more formal", "less apologetic", "friendlier".
- Drafting from it: "reply saying yes to Thursday", "write a one-line summary". Only the draft comes back, and it replaces the selection, so the selected text has to be editable: paste a copy of the message into your reply and select it there.
The model is told to change only what the instruction asks for, to keep line breaks and lists unless you ask otherwise, and to keep the text in the language it was written in unless you ask for another. A German paragraph with "make it shorter" should come back as shorter German. It is also told that the selection is material, never a command, even where the text reads like one.
Changing your mind
Press Esc while you are still speaking and, with the default settings, the edit is dropped; the selection stays as it was. Saying "scratch that" does the same, as it does for a dictation, while voice commands are on. After the rewrite has landed, ⌘Z in the app reverts it in one step.
An edit is not saved to History. The undo in the app you were editing is the only copy of the original, so read the result before you close the document.
What does it need?
Edit Selection is on by default and uses the same engine you chose for Cleanup, so it needs two models: your speech model, for the instruction, and the cleanup model, for the rewrite. Until the cleanup model is downloaded the key does nothing. Without the speech model, pressing it says so and opens the Model pane.
It also needs Accessibility permission, which dictation already asks for. Dictera reads the selection through it, and where an app does not expose its text that way - many web-based and Electron apps - it copies the selection instead and puts your clipboard back before pasting.
With the built-in model, the selected text and your instruction stay on this Mac. If you pointed Cleanup at a remote model, Edit Selection follows that choice and sends both to it. An agent model such as Claude Code works too, but a turn there takes seconds to minutes rather than the moment the feature implies.
Changing the key
The shortcut lives in Settings, in the Shortcut pane, under Selected Text. You can switch it to a double-tap or a key combination; then you press once, speak, and press again to apply. The same row has the switch that turns the feature off, and Quick Controls (⌥⌘C) can toggle it without opening Settings.
We chose right Shift because it stays clear of dictation on right Command and the selection shortcuts on right Option, and because every Mac keyboard has one. A double-tap of the same key opens Ask Dictera, which is why a held key and a tapped one are treated as different shortcuts.
Where it stops
- Formatting inside the selection. The rewrite goes in as plain text, so bold, links and colours in the selected passage do not survive it. Edit before you format, not after.
- Long documents. Past 4,000 characters, Dictera says the text is too long before you speak, rather than after. Edit a section at a time.
- Moving around. It rewrites what you selected. It cannot select for you, and it does not click, scroll or move the cursor.
Where to go next
Edit Selection sits with Correct Selection and Translate Selection on the features page, and the dictation page covers what happens between the key and the words. If selecting is the part that hurts, the setup for wrist pain shows how to get by with fewer of them.
