Talon Wiki

Basic Usage

The examples below are just a very small selection of common commands for working with apps, tabs, media, mouse, etc that should help you be productive with Talon right away. These are based on the Talon Community user file set (see the earlier section). These commands may vary depending on your individual setup.

Command history

command history

Toggles the command history display, which shows the last few commands as Talon understood them; if you’re not sure what Talon is doing, or if it understood you correctly, this is how to check it.

Show available comands

Talon Community user file set has an integrated help. It can show you a list of all defined commands, or just all commands that are available now.

help alphabet

show the spelling alphabet for pressing individual keys

help context

show all defined commands

help active

show all currently available commands

help next, help previous

go to the next or previous page of help items if there are a lot

help close

hide any open help window again

Switch between modes

Talon has three basic modes by default: command, dictation, and sleep.

In command mode, your speech will be interpreted as commands by default. In dictation mode, your speech will be transcribed as plain text by default (although with some commands, like “comma” etc. for punctuation), similar to traditional speech recognition systems. In sleep mode, Talon will do nothing until it hears a commands that wakes it up.

There are currently no visual cues about the current mode. You can tell which mode you’re in by running commands and seeing if they are transcribed literally.

dictation mode

switch to dictation mode

command mode

switch to command mode

go to sleep

go to sleep, stop processing commands (you can also use talon sleep to disambiguate when using Dragon)

wake up

wake up and return to previous mode (you can also use talon wake to disambiguate when using Dragon)

Open and switch between windows in apps such as Chrome

window new
window next
window last
window close

Working with applications

focus "app name"     (say "focus chrome" for example, to switch active window to chrome)
running list         (see all active applications)
running hide         (close the list of active applications)

If you are on Ubuntu or another Gnome-based Linux distribution, focus might not work consistently across different workspaces, popping up a notification rather than actually switching focus. This extension may help.

Working with tabs

tab (open | new)
tab last
tab next
tab close
tab (reopen|restore)
go tab <number>
go tab final

Working with media

mute
play next
play previous
(play | pause)

Working with the Tobii eye tracker

control mouse (say "control mouse" to toggle on/off Tobii moving the mouse)
run calibration (say "run calibration" to start Tobii calibration)

Working with text

copy that
cut that
paste that
undo that
redo that

Working with the mouse and scrolling

dubclick (to double left click)
righty (to right click)
(page | scroll) up
(page | scroll) [down]
wheel down
wheel tiny [down]
wheel downer
wheel up
wheel tiny up
wheel upper
wheel gaze (for scrolling down) (this seems like it would use the Tobii eye tracker but it does not)
wheel stop
wheel left
wheel tiny left
wheel right
wheel tiny right
curse yes (shows cursor)
curse no (hides cursor)
drag