QUILL Lite 1.2

Version 1.2.0 (build 6), the beta for testers, October 2026. 1.2.0 was prepared on October 3, 2026 and is not yet published; the last published version is 1.1.2.

Welcome to QUILL Lite 1.2. This is the release about words. QUILL Lite now has a thesaurus that finds the word you are really on, a dictionary that works without AI, and an AI dictionary that reads your word in its own sentence and tells you whether it is the right one.

It is also the release about knowing what happened. QUILL Lite keeps a list of everything it has told you, F9 says the last important thing again, and if something goes wrong while you are busy elsewhere, it waits for you rather than slipping past.

Everything works from the keyboard and tells you how it went, the way the rest of QUILL Lite does.

New in build 6: tables in every document

Build 6 keeps everything from build 5, below, and adds tables, Help > What’s New and a full menu bar when every document is closed. It is the same work as in QUILL, on the same keys.

Making a table

• Insert > Table… (Ctrl+Alt+T, QUILL’s key) asks how many columns and rows and whether the first row is a header, then leaves the cursor in the first cell. In a rich text document it makes a real table: a grid on screen, and a table to your screen reader, to Word and to WordPad, with no | characters. In Markdown and plain text it makes rows of cells divided by |; in HTML, a <table> whose header cells are marked for screen readers.
• A Word or RTF document’s tables open as real tables too. Saved as RTF or Word, a table’s first row is marked as the header row. Switching a rich document to Markdown or plain text turns its tables into | rows, and back.
• Trim Trailing Spaces moves to Ctrl+Alt+R, as in QUILL, to give Insert Table its key.

Reading a table

• The arrows read a table cell by cell. Up and Down go to the cell above and below and say it (“Row 3: Ann”), instead of your screen reader reading the whole row. Right at the end of a cell and Left at its start step to the next or previous cell; inside a cell they move letter by letter as always. Down onto a table lands in its first cell and says its shape, such as “Table, 3 rows, 2 columns”. It works the same with JAWS, NVDA and Narrator, with nothing to install.
• Tab and Shift+Tab move cell to cell, as in Word, and Tab in the last cell adds a row.
• A move says only what changed: the column, with its header when the table has a header row (“Column 3, Role: Lead”), the row, or both. With Announce Headings on, arrowing into a table says its shape and leaving it says “Out of table”.

Changing a table

• Navigate > Table gains Insert Row Below, Insert Column Right, Delete Row, Delete Column and Tidy Table. As in Word they have no keys: press Alt+N, then T. Each is one undo step. In a real table they keep the text in the cells, but not bold or other formatting inside them.
• A blank row is no longer skipped by the table keys.

Menus and help

• Pinned to the taskbar, QUILL Lite opens as itself. Reported on QUILLVille: QUILL Lite pinned to the taskbar from its running window asked “Several QuillVille apps are installed. Which one do you want to open?”, and the copy it then opened ignored your settings and said its speech engines were not included. Windows had pinned the shared QuillVille runtime instead of QUILL Lite. QUILL Lite’s shortcuts now carry its own taskbar identity, so a new pin opens QUILL Lite through its own launcher, like the desktop icon. An older pin still asks once which app you want, then opens it the same proper way. To replace an old pin, unpin it and pin QUILL Lite again after you update. Every QuillVille app has the same fix.
• Help > What’s New opens the changelog in your browser. It has no key: press Alt+H, then W. Every QUILL family app has the same item.
• A full menu bar with every document closed. Close the last document and the window still has File (New, Open, Recent Documents, Reopen Last Session and Exit), Tools (Preferences, the Keyboard Manager, the Sound Scheme, and backing up and restoring settings) and Help, on the same keys as a document window.

New in build 5: Find in Open Documents, folder search and the clipboard collector

Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F8 to find and replace across every document you have open, not just the one in front of you. It searches what is in each window right now, including changes you have not saved and documents you have never saved. Find Next moves from document to document and tells you each one’s name, Find All lists every match, and Replace All tells you how many it found before it changes anything, lets you undo each document on its own, and saves nothing. Afterwards, F3 keeps searching across your documents until you start an ordinary Find. QUILL has it too, on Ctrl+Shift+F10. Thanks to Chris Nova for asking.

QUILL Lite also has QUILL’s folder search now: Search in Files (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F) and Replace Across Files (Ctrl+Shift+R), on the Edit menu itself, just below Replace… and Find in Open Documents. They search, or change, every file in a folder without opening them, and Replace Across Files shows you every change and asks first. Edit > Matches keeps All Matches and Count Occurrences, the two about the document in front of you.

And QUILL Lite now has QUILL’s clipboard collector. Press Alt+Shift+S in a window and everything you copy, in any program, lands at the end of it, until you press Alt+Shift+S again. Collect Selection, which used that key, is now on Alt+Shift+C.

Testing rebuild: 1.2.0 (build 5)

Build 5 keeps everything from build 4, below, and adds Find in Open Documents, folder search and the clipboard collector above, plus everything in this section.

Word documents, PDFs and other files

• Edit Word documents. A .docx now opens as rich text, and Ctrl+S saves it as a real Word document. Headings, lists, bold, italic, fonts, colours, links and tables come through, and Word still finds your headings. If a save would lose something, such as pictures, comments or tracked changes, QUILL Lite names it first and lets you read only, edit (after making a backup copy) or edit a copy. Save As has a Word document row. The user guide’s “Word documents” has the details.
• Other Office files open as readable text. Excel, PowerPoint, OpenDocument and Word files with macros open with headings, lists and tables you can read, each sheet and slide named, instead of unreadable raw contents. Ctrl+S never writes over them; it offers a text file instead. The user guide’s “Office files at a glance” sets out what happens to each kind.
• Word files read better. Numbered items read 1, 2, 3 instead of 1, 1, 1, equations come through as text, a Word file opened as text appears in about a second, and saving twice no longer turns Heading 5s into bold text or adds blank paragraphs.
• Highlighted passages. In a Word file opened as text, or a rich text document, Navigate > Highlighted Passages takes you to the highlighter marks. Alt+PageDown and Alt+PageUp go to the next and previous one and say its colour and words, and Ctrl+F2 lists them all. See “Finding the highlighted passages in a Word document”.
• Read a table cell by cell. Navigate > Table has QUILL’s eight table keys: Ctrl+Alt+Right and Ctrl+Alt+Left for the next and previous cell, Ctrl+Alt+Down and Ctrl+Alt+Up for the cell below and above, Alt+Home and Alt+End for the first and last cell in the row, and Ctrl+Alt+Home and Ctrl+Alt+End for the first and last cell of the table. You hear what changed and what is there, such as “Column 3, Role: Lead”. It works in Markdown tables, real tables in rich text and Word documents. See “Moving through a table”.
• QUILL Lite opens PDFs. Press Ctrl+O and choose one. It opens as its text, page by page, and Go To (Ctrl+G) takes you to a page or to an entry in the PDF’s own outline. A locked PDF asks for its password and never saves it, and QUILL Lite never writes to a PDF. When it opens, you hear which pages may read poorly. Page breaks are a pause, never “form feed”. See “Opening a PDF”.
• PDFs in the portable copy. The portable QUILL Lite now reads PDFs and has Windows OCR too, like the installed copy. The portable zip is about 25 MB bigger.
• Import / Convert Document. File > Import / Convert Document (OCR)…, QUILL’s command, turns a document, an e-book, a PDF or a picture of a page into a new, untitled document, so nothing you were writing is replaced. A scanned PDF asks before reading it with OCR on this computer. Nothing is uploaded. See “Importing and converting a document”.
• OCR without Tesseract. A picture of a page is read with Windows’ own OCR when Tesseract is not installed, instead of stopping with a message about installing it.

Writing and editing

• AutoCorrect. Check Correct common misspellings as I type in Preferences, and a space or Enter after a misspelling such as “teh” puts the right word in, keeping your capital letter. You hear what was corrected, and Ctrl+Z straight afterwards puts back what you typed. It is off until you turn it on, and never touches code, web addresses or words in capitals.
• AutoCorrect Entries. Tools > AutoCorrect Entries… lists every correction. Add your own, edit one, or turn off one that keeps changing a word you meant. See “Correcting misspellings as you type”.
• Read-Only Guard. Tools > Read-Only Guard (Ctrl+Alt+Backspace, the same key as QUILL) locks a document you are only reading. Typing does nothing, and commands that would change it say “Document is read-only”, but Find, Go To, bookmarks and notes still work. QUILL Lite remembers the lock for that file.
• Enter keeps a Markdown list going. In a Markdown document, Enter at the end of a list item starts the next one, and on an empty item ends the list. One Ctrl+Z takes it back. See “Pressing Enter in a list”.
• Hear which lines have notes. A soft sound plays when the cursor arrives on a line with an inline note. Preferences lets you hear “note” or nothing instead. See “Hearing which lines have notes”.
• Bold italic stays bold italic. A Markdown word written with three asterisks on each side now becomes bold italic in rich text, without a stray asterisk.
• Emoji no longer throw commands off. After an emoji, Change Case, Copy, Find, Replace and spelling suggestions now work on exactly the text you selected.
• Typing a name in a list. In Snippets and other pick-one lists, a space while you type a name is part of the name. Manage Abbreviations now opens and searches a big list at once.
• Every Alt key in Preferences works. No two controls share an Alt letter any more.

Sounds, speech and braille

• App Sounds and Alt+Shift+M. The App Sounds Play On… button in Tools > Sound Scheme… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+O) chooses where QUILL Lite’s own sounds play: the system default, none, or a sound card or headset by name. Alt+Shift+M turns QUILL Lite’s sounds off and back on, and Tools > App Sounds shows a check mark while they are on. It now silences only the app you are in, not QUILL too. Your screen reader is never moved. See “Where QUILL Lite’s sounds play, and turning them off”.
• If your screen reader stops, your work is saved first. QUILL Lite checks that NVDA or JAWS is still running. If it stops, every document with unsaved changes is saved to its spare copy at once and the status bar tells you. QUILL Lite keeps running. There is nothing to turn on. See “If your screen reader stops”.
• No more braille flicker. Messages that arrive in a quick burst, such as dictation’s live preview, settle on your braille display instead of replacing each other faster than you can read. Speech is unchanged. See “On a braille display”.

AI help

• Asked before switching AI. If your own key or ChatGPT sign-in stops working, QUILL Lite asks before sending anything to QUILL’s free AI instead, and No sends nothing. See “If the AI you use is not available”.
• The AI tries again when it is busy. A busy or timed-out answer is tried up to three times, quietly. See “When the AI service is busy”.
• Answers read as words. Answers are read without Markdown symbols, so no “star star”. What goes into your document is the answer exactly as it came. See “How answers are read aloud”.
• Keep some words of a change. In Review AI Changes, Words in this change lets you drop single word edits and keep the rest. See “Keeping some words of a change and not others”.
• Go back over a conversation. In the AI Conversation window, Alt+1 to Alt+0 read the newest ten messages, Messages… lists them all, and Export Conversation… saves it as a Word document or text file. Conversations are saved as you go, and Saved Conversations opens one again. See “Going back over a conversation”.
• Prompt Library, the Chat Key and web search. Prompt Library (Ctrl+7) is QUILL’s library of prompts. Ask AI a Question (Ctrl+6) opens straight on a question. On the free AI, Search the web gives ten searches a month, and Web Searches Left (Ctrl+9) says how many remain. The AI Assistant can put the answer in its window, at the cursor, or on the clipboard, and QUILL’s free service can add new tools without an update.

Dictation

• “Quill dictate” is heard the way the engines write it. Reported on QUILLVille: QUILL Lite loaded the chosen speech engine but never answered the wake phrase. The built-in engines often write it as “Quilt it take”, “Quiltic tape” or “Quilldictate”, and QUILL Lite only accepted the two words exactly. It now accepts a phrase that sounds like the wake phrase at the start of what you say, while ordinary openings such as “Will it take long” or “Kill it today” still do nothing; the command word and the stop phrase forgive in the same way. If another QuillVille program is already using the microphone, QUILL Lite now says once that the wake phrase is not being listened for, and which program has the microphone, instead of waiting in silence. If the wake phrase is still missed, start QUILL Lite with the environment variable QUILL_DICTATION_TRACE=1: quill.log then records what the engine heard each time, to send to support.

• Dictation profiles. Choose the kind of writing in More Dictation Settings: Email, Document, Markdown, Chat, Coding, Verbatim or Standard. Each changes pauses, filler words, punctuation and headings. Say “QUILL email mode” to switch, and “QUILL bold that” or “QUILL italic that” to format. See “Dictation profiles: the kind of writing you are doing”.

• Dictation style and fixing your corrections. Choose Verbatim, Clean or, with AI help, Polished. Fix it when I correct myself writes only “Friday” for “meet on Thursday, no, Friday”. It is off until you turn it on.

• Polish when you ask, and learning from you. With polishing allowed, “QUILL polish that” asks the AI once to tidy punctuation and slips. Correct the same word the same way twice and QUILL Lite offers to remember it; No is the default.

• The command word. Say “QUILL” before a command and it is never written: “QUILL scratch that”. Speak a Command (F11) does the same from the keyboard. The user guide’s section on the command word has the details.

• Review Dictation (Shift+F4). Say “QUILL review that” to hold your last phrase in a window, change it by typing, dictating or asking the AI, then insert it as one undo step. See “Review before inserting”.

• Fix words without retyping. “Replace Tuesday with Wednesday”, “change that to” and “delete previous paragraph”. “Correct that” now works with Moonshine and Whisper too, and words a correction replaced wait in Recent Phrases. See “Replace and change that”.

• Nothing you said is lost. A phrase that could not be written is kept privately, even through a crash, until you write or discard it from Recent Phrases (Shift+F11). A dictation history, text only, is there if you turn it on.

• Reading back more. “read that” reads all of what last went in, and “read last sentence”, “read last paragraph” and “read selection” are new. They work in a read-only document too.

• Spell an address with pauses. While spelling, letters join the ones before them, so you can pause mid-address. Say “space” for a space.

• A Markdown link by voice now comes out as a working link.

• A calmer spoken preview. Each word heard so far is said once, when the engine is sure of it.

• A backslash in My Words and Phrases is kept, so a folder path reads back as you typed it.

• Speech providers. Speech Providers… in Dictation Settings lets you dictate with your own account at Azure, Google, Deepgram and others. You are asked before anything is sent. See “Speech providers: dictation with your own account”.

• Which model suits this computer. Speech Models now recommends one model and says why. It is only advice. The user guide’s new “Which engine should I choose?” explains the choices in plain words.

• Advice from real speech. We tested every dictation model on recordings of real people, including audiobooks no model had been trained on, and the recommendation now uses those results instead of a computer voice. In English, NVIDIA Parakeet Unified 0.6B got 3.2 percent of words wrong, against 6.5 for the built-in Moonshine. In Spanish, NVIDIA Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 got 4.4 percent wrong on Google’s FLEURS Spanish, against 30.5 for the built-in Whisper. So Speech Models now recommends:

  • Parakeet Unified for English on a computer with 8 GB of memory and four cores;
  • Parakeet TDT v3 for English on 8 GB with two cores, and for Spanish on 8 GB;
  • the built-in Moonshine (English) and Whisper (Spanish) on 4 GB, or when little memory is free.

  A computer with 8 GB may now give dictation 1.6 GB beside your screen reader (it was 1 GB), and never more than is free, less half a gigabyte. The tiers follow the real speeds: Parakeet TDT v3, Parakeet Unified and Whisper base.en are now Lightweight, and Nemotron is Balanced. The user guide’s new “How we chose: tested on real speech” has the tables, and “Nemotron or Parakeet: which should I try?” is rewritten: Parakeet makes fewer mistakes, and Nemotron is still the one that shows your words while you speak.

• Removed: five English-only models. Distil-Whisper small.en, Whisper small.en, Distil-Whisper medium.en, Whisper medium.en and Distil-Whisper large-v3 are no longer in the list. On the held-out audiobooks, NVIDIA Parakeet Unified 0.6B got 3.2 percent of words wrong, against 3.6 to 6.3 for these five. It was also faster on one thread, in the same or a smaller memory tier. Whisper base.en and every many-language Whisper size stay.

  If you were using one, dictation switches to Parakeet Unified when you update, if you have already downloaded it; otherwise it uses the built-in model. Nothing is downloaded. The next time dictation starts, you hear one sentence, once across every QuillVille program. For example: “Whisper small.en was removed in this release. Dictation now uses Parakeet Unified, which you already have.” Or: “Whisper small.en was removed in this release, so dictation uses the built-in model. Parakeet Unified, in the model list, is more accurate.”

  Your downloaded files are not deleted. They stay in %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuillVille\Dictation\models (in a portable copy, data\dictation\models inside the portable folder), in folders named whisper-small.en-int8, whisper-distil-small.en-int8, whisper-medium.en-int8, whisper-distil-medium.en-int8 and whisper-distil-large-v3-int8. Delete the folder to free the space.

  To choose Parakeet Unified instead, open Dictation Settings (Alt+Shift+F6), press Better Accuracy: Speech Models… (Alt+B), choose NVIDIA Parakeet Unified 0.6B, press Download… (Alt+D), then Use for Dictation (Alt+U).

• A better Spanish model, said once. The built-in Whisper is the only Spanish model that comes with QUILL Lite, and it gets about one word in four wrong. If your computer can run NVIDIA Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 (in practice, 8 GB of memory and four cores), the first time you dictate in Spanish you hear one sentence saying so. For example: “For Spanish, NVIDIA Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 gets about 6 percent of words wrong, against 29 for the built-in model. It is a 670 MB download in the model list.” Nothing is downloaded or changed. You hear it once across every QuillVille program, and a computer with 4 GB hears nothing. If another start sentence is due, such as a removed model, that one comes first and this one waits for a later start.

• Moonshine base hears long phrases. It used to write nothing at all for a phrase longer than about eight and a half seconds. It now hears a long phrase in pieces and joins them. The pieces overlap by half a second, so a word that falls where two pieces meet is not lost.

• Switch to Recommended Model. Speech Models has a new button beside Show Recommended Model: Switch to Recommended Model (Alt+H). It chooses the recommended model and changes nothing else. Dictation Settings then says “Speech engine:” and the model’s name, then “Press OK to keep it.” If the model is not on this computer yet, nothing is downloaded: you are told, and taken to its row so you can download it first. While a download is running, it asks you to wait or cancel first.

• Free the space of a model you stopped using. When you switch away from a downloaded model and press OK in Dictation Settings, a question offers to delete the old one. For example: “Now using NVIDIA Parakeet Unified 0.6B. Delete Whisper medium to free 946 MB?” No is the default. QUILL, QUILL Lite and QUILL Transcribe share the model’s files, and the question says so. It is not asked while dictation is running or waiting for the wake phrase; remove the model later in Speech Models instead. Remove there now says how much space was freed, and focus goes back to the list.

• Shared settings and words. You can share dictation settings and your word list with QUILL, QUILL Transcribe and Quill Inkwell, and import or export My Words and Phrases (Alt+Shift+F10) as Markdown or CSV.

• Programs dictation never types into. Password managers and Windows sign-in prompts are on the list to begin with, and you can add more. See “Programs dictation never types into”.

• One microphone at a time. If QUILL Transcribe is already listening, Ctrl+F11 tells you instead of opening a second microphone. QUILL Transcribe and Quill Inkwell keep out of QUILL Lite’s window.

• A tick while a phrase is worked on, if you turn it on in More Dictation Settings.

• Translate a recording into English. In Transcribe a Recording (Shift+F5), check Translate into English for a Spanish recording.

• The Dictation commands guide now ends with worked examples. The After each phrase is written, give me list has moved beside the other sounds.

• QUILL Transcribe, released on 1 November 2026, is now in the user guide’s list of QuillVille apps.

Updates

• A portable update keeps your settings where QUILL Lite looks for them.
• A failed update undoes itself properly, and an update never asks for administrator approval.
• The Beta engine’s 335 MB come back when your last app returns to Stable.
• The user guide’s menu paths are checked against the real menus before each release.

Testing rebuild: 1.2.0 (build 4)

Build 4 runs on Python 3.14. Its installer also removes the older Python 3.13 runtime once no QuillVille app on your computer uses it.

Dictation is kinder to screen reader users with a headset. QUILL Lite no longer writes down your screen reader reading back what you said, saying the same phrase twice writes it twice, and the sound for a written phrase is a soft tone instead of something that sounded like the letter “c”.

Build 4 keeps everything from build 3:

Build 3 retains build 2’s local-recording transcription fix and Windows audio duration fallback. It prepares downloaded model availability in the background, and completed transcripts are saved privately for opening from Notifications. Your current document stays unchanged until you choose to open a result.

Routine settings saves also run in the background and still report failures through Activity. Python HTTPS requests use the Windows certificate store while checking certificates and hostnames. The installer is current-user only and does not offer an administrator-only installation.

The bundled changelog records the complete build changes. These testing packages are not a GitHub release or a Stable-channel promotion.

If you already use QUILL Lite

Your settings, recent files and recovered work come with you exactly as they are, and Help > Check for Updates (Ctrl+Alt+U) offers 1.2.0 like any other update.

If you use the portable QUILL Lite 1.1.2, update by hand this time. In that copy, Install and restart now can delete everything in its data folder: your settings, keys and recovered work. The fault is in the updater inside 1.1.2, so 1.2.0 cannot fix it for you; 1.2.0 carries a fixed one. An installed copy is not affected. Instead of Install and restart now:

1. Close QUILL Lite.
2. Copy the data folder next to QuillLite.exe somewhere safe.
3. Download the new QuillLite-Portable zip and unzip it into a new folder next to the old one, not on top of it.
4. Copy everything from your saved data folder into the new folder’s data folder, and choose to replace files with the same name.
5. Start the new copy, check Help > About and your settings, then delete the old folder when you are sure.

If your settings are already gone, QUILL Lite cannot bring them back; look for a backup or your computer’s File History.

Some keys have moved:

• Tools > Keyboard Manager is now Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Space. Its old key, Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R, shows and hides Quill Radio from anywhere, so while Quill Radio was running the Keyboard Manager never opened. QUILL moved its Keyboard Manager to the same key, so the two still match.
• Trim Trailing Spaces is now Ctrl+Alt+R, as in QUILL; Ctrl+Alt+T is Insert Table.
• Remove Quote Marks is now Alt+Shift+. (the period), and Snippets is Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Home.
• Collect Selection is now Alt+Shift+C; Alt+Shift+S is the clipboard collector, as in QUILL.
• Alt+Shift+1 to Alt+Shift+8 reopen your first eight recent files, and Alt+Shift+9 is always AutoCorrect Entries. The ninth file is in File > Recent Documents (Alt+Shift+0).

Try this first

1. Put the cursor on a word you are not happy with and press Shift+F7. Arrow through the meanings, press Tab to reach the words, and press Enter on one you like. It goes into your sentence in the right form.
2. On another word, press the Applications key. You find two new submenus, Thesaurus for that word and Dictionary for that word.
3. Press Alt+F10 for Look Up Word. It works without the internet, and tells you more if you let it go online.
4. Press Ctrl+, for Preferences and type “spelling” in Find a setting. Press Down, then Enter, and you are on that setting.
5. Press Shift+F9 for Activity, the list of everything QUILL Lite has told you since you opened it. Press F9 any time to hear the last important thing again.

Finding the right word

The thesaurus

Press Shift+F7, the same key as in Word and QUILL, or choose Tools > Thesaurus. It opens on the word you are on.

A thesaurus lists plain forms of words, run rather than running. QUILL Lite works your word back for you, so “running” finds “run”, “happier” finds “happy” and “stopped” finds “stop”, and it tells you so. Then it puts your choice back in the form your sentence needs. Choose sprint for running and you get sprinting. Choose glad for Happier and you get More glad, capital letter and all.

It is the same thesaurus QUILL uses, and it comes inside QUILL Lite. Nothing is downloaded and nothing is sent anywhere.

Want the short version without a window? Say Word Summary (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+[) tells you what the thesaurus knows about a word: how many meanings it has, the first few replacements, and its opposites.

Look Up, the dictionary without AI

Press Alt+F10, or choose Tools > Look Up Word. Offline, you get synonyms, opposites and related words from the word list inside QUILL Lite.

Check Use online sources and you also get definitions with examples, more words, rhymes and a short Wikipedia summary. Only the word is sent, never your sentence or your document, and only after you check the box. QUILL Lite remembers your choice.

Press Enter on a word to put it in place of yours. Add to Dictionary teaches a word to your spell checker.

The AI dictionary

A thesaurus knows every meaning of bank. It cannot tell which one your sentence means. Tools > Dictionary can, because it sends the word and the sentence it is in (never the rest of your document) and answers in plain words written to be listened to.

There are twelve questions to ask, each with a key of its own:

• Define in Context (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+’) says what the word means here.
• Synonyms That Fit, Simpler Word, More Formal Word and More Vivid Word offer replacements that suit this sentence.
• Is This the Right Word? settles affect or effect, complement or compliment.
• Opposites, Use It in a Sentence, Where It Comes From, How to Say It and Rhymes do just what they say.
• Word Explorer (Ctrl+F10) does them all at once.
• Find the Word For (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+]) is the other way round: you describe the meaning, and it suggests the word you are reaching for.

When an answer offers words, Tab to Choices and press Enter, or choose Use This Word. It goes into your document as one step, and one Ctrl+Z takes it back.

The AI dictionary needs your ChatGPT subscription or your own AI key. It does not use QUILL’s free AI service, because a dictionary gets asked many times a day and would use up the free allowance quickly.

Checking your word lists

Tools > Spelling > Dictionary Status (Alt+Shift+;) tells you how many words your personal dictionary and this document’s own list hold, where each file is kept, and whether the thesaurus is there.

If you would rather not have any of this, turn off Dictionary and thesaurus in Tools > Customize Features (Ctrl+Alt+F10). It is on to begin with, and off in the WordPad and Notepad profiles.

AI help with a Google Gemini key

Use My Own AI Key (Alt+F2), which used to be called Use My Own OpenAI Key, now opens on a Provider list: OpenAI or Google Gemini. Choose one, paste that company’s key, and everything follows your choice: where your text goes, which models you can pick, and what they cost. QUILL Lite never guesses from the key or the model name.

You can keep both keys saved and switch with the Provider list. With a Gemini key, Ask About an Image (Ctrl+F5) works too, and so do the AI dictionary and Tidy Dictated Text.

If you use your ChatGPT plan in more than one Quill app, each app now keeps its own sign-in. Signing out of one leaves the others signed in, and Use My ChatGPT Subscription (Alt+F5) tells you when another app on this computer is already signed in, so signing in here is one Allow in your browser.

Knowing what happened

Activity and Repeat Last Result

Help > Activity (Shift+F9) lists everything QUILL Lite has told you since you opened it, newest first. Each row offers what you can do about it:

• Retry tries the same thing again.
• Open Folder shows you the file in File Explorer.
• Copy Details copies the row, ready to paste into a message to support.

If work finishes after you closed the window that started it, the result lands here instead of being lost. A large file you opened while you were busy elsewhere is here too, as Opened or Could not open.

Help > Repeat Last Result (F9) says the last important thing again. That is QUILL Lite’s own last message, not the last thing your screen reader read. Both keys do the same in QUILL, Quill Radio and QUILL Cast.

When your settings cannot be saved

Sometimes Windows will not let QUILL Lite save your settings, perhaps because the disk is full. Now you are told once, with the reason. Your choices keep working for the rest of the session, the warning stays in the status bar’s Message cell, and Activity offers Retry. When a later save works, you hear that too. Preferences no longer says “saved” when it was not.

Finding a setting

Preferences (Ctrl+,) has a Find a setting box at the top. Type a word, press Down to reach the matches, and press Enter on one to go straight to it. Ctrl+F takes you back to the box. Searching never changes a setting, and OK and Cancel work just as before. Quill Radio and QUILL Cast have the same box in their Preferences.

Making QUILL Lite your text editor

The installer is for your Windows account only. It does not offer an all-users install or need administrator approval. The separate option below that opens QUILL Lite whenever a program asks for Notepad changes a computer-wide setting, so Windows still asks for administrator approval for that action.

Every QUILL Lite install now tells Windows that QUILL Lite can open text, Markdown, rich text, HTML and CSV files. It takes nothing over. QUILL Lite simply shows up in Open with, and in Windows Settings under Default apps, where you choose which app opens what. The Custom install’s checkbox for opening .txt and .rtf files is gone, because there is nothing left to ask.

Open Preferences (Ctrl+,) and look under Windows and your files. A line there tells you what opens in place of Notepad right now.

The Make QUILL Lite My Text Editor… button takes you the rest of the way. It explains what Windows lets an app do and what you choose, then opens the Default apps page for QUILL Lite. Choose .txt, pick QUILL Lite, and choose Set default. It works from a portable copy too.

Some programs still open Notepad by name. If you would like QUILL Lite to open for those as well, check Open QUILL Lite instead of Notepad and press OK. It is off to begin with. It changes Notepad for everyone on the computer, so Windows asks for administrator approval, and clearing the box puts Notepad back. On Windows 11, QUILL Lite also shows you where to turn off the newer Notepad’s app execution alias. Uninstalling QUILL Lite puts Notepad back for you.

QUILL for All has both of these too, in its own Settings. Only one program can open in place of Notepad, so if QUILL already does, QUILL Lite tells you before it takes over, and QUILL does the same.

Choose Stable, Beta or Dev

New in this version: Release Channel…, on the Help menu. Every copy stays on Stable, the version we check with JAWS and NVDA, unless you choose otherwise. Beta gets new features a few weeks early; Dev is the work in progress, for testers.

Arrowing through the three only explains them. If you choose Beta or Dev, a short warning says plainly what could go wrong and how to come back, and nothing moves until you check I understand and choose Move. Before it moves, QUILL Lite saves a copy of your settings, keys and recent files list. Your documents are not copied, and updates don’t change them.

Coming back to Stable is safe. If Stable can read everything you have saved, QUILL Lite offers to go straight back. If it can’t yet, QUILL Lite says so plainly and lets you either wait for Stable to catch up (it moves you across by itself), or go back to the copy of your settings saved when you joined. A copy of how things are right now is saved first, so nothing is thrown away.

On Beta and Dev, QUILL Lite downloads new versions in the background so they are ready when you are, and never installs one without asking. It waits on a metered connection, during Quiet Hours, and while Quill Radio is recording.

Quill Radio and QUILL Cast share one engine with QUILL Lite on your computer. When one of you moves to Beta or Dev, it gets its own copy of the engine, so the apps you leave on Stable are never touched. That copy uses about 335 MB of disk space until your last app comes back to Stable.

If an update ever fails to start, it undoes itself, puts back the version you had, and tells you so the next time QUILL Lite opens. The window’s Update History button shows everything the updater has done.

Help > About shows a build number after the version. The initial 1.2.0 release was build 1; this testing rebuild is 1.2.0 (build 5). If a newer build is published to your update channel without a new version number, Check for Updates offers it to you. Uploading a testing package alone does not publish it to an update channel.

Dictating in Spanish

New, and ready for you to try: you can dictate in Spanish. Open Dictation Settings (Alt+Shift+F6), choose Spanish under Dictation language, and press Enter. Or press Ctrl+Shift+F11 to switch between English and Spanish at any time, even while you are dictating.

• Your words come out in Spanish, accents and all, using Whisper’s multilingual speech model. It comes with QUILL Lite, so nothing is downloaded.
• The commands stay in English for now. “Scratch that”, “new paragraph” and the rest work as they always have. Spanish commands come next, once a native speaker has checked them.
• With automatic punctuation on, Whisper punctuates for you. Turn it off and you can say the Spanish words instead: “coma”, “punto”, “punto y coma”, “dos puntos”, “abrir interrogación”, “cerrar interrogación” and more.
• The wake and stop phrases become “Quill dicta” and “deja de dictar”.

QUILL has the same thing, in the same place. The user guide’s “Dictating in Spanish” has the whole list. If something comes out wrong, tell us through Help > Get Help from Support. We’re keen to hear how it goes.

Better accuracy: optional speech models

Dictation works the moment you install. If you want more accuracy, you can now download a larger model: the same local models VS Code offers for its own dictation, plus the rest of the Whisper family.

Open Dictation Settings (Alt+Shift+F6) and press Better Accuracy: Speech Models… (Alt+B). The list starts with NVIDIA’s Nemotron 3.5 ASR Streaming (VS Code’s default), then NVIDIA’s two Parakeet models, Whisper small, base and tiny, the rest of Whisper from base.en to large-v3, and a lighter Moonshine base. Each one says what it is good for, how big it is, which languages it knows, which computers suit it and whether yours should keep up.

• Nothing downloads until you press Download… and say yes to a question that names where it comes from, its size, its licence and where it will be saved. On a metered connection you are asked first.
• They are free and run on your computer’s processor; no graphics card needed. Your voice never leaves the computer.
• A download you cancel carries on later from where it stopped, every file is checked before it is used, and Remove frees the space.
• QUILL and QUILL Lite share the models on the same computer. In a portable copy, models are saved inside the portable folder, so everything travels together.
• Moonshine stays the engine until you choose another. If a downloaded model goes missing, dictation tells you in one sentence and uses the built-in one.

The Recommendation box (Alt+C) names the model that suits this computer, from our tests on real speech (see “Advice from real speech” in build 5, above). The user guide’s “Better accuracy: optional speech models” has every model’s published accuracy, what we measured on real speech, and “Nemotron or Parakeet: which should I try?”.

Dictation that keeps up with you

Dictation learned a lot this time, much of it from studying how VS Code does it. Everything here is in QUILL too, on the same keys.

• Hold Ctrl+F11 to talk, if you like. Ctrl+F11 still starts dictation with one press and stops it with the next. If you would rather hold the keys down while you talk, turn on Hold the dictation key to talk in More Dictation Settings: say what you want and let go, and your last phrase is written and dictation turns off. A quick press still works either way.
• Stopping never cuts you off. Press or let go of Ctrl+F11 while you are still finishing a sentence, and that phrase is written before dictation stops.
• See your words while you speak. With Nemotron or OpenAI, the words heard so far show in the status bar and on a braille display as you talk, and the final words go in when you pause. Nothing is spoken unless you ask for it, so nothing talks over you. Nemotron’s questions now end with a question mark.
• Your words go where you started. Move the cursor, or even switch windows, while a phrase is being recognised, and it still goes where you were speaking. You hear “Written where you started”.
• “Correct that.” With Windows speech recognition, say “correct that” to hear its other guesses, then “choose two” to swap one in.
• Talk to the AI. Press Ctrl+F11 in the AI Conversation window and ask out loud. Your message is sent when you pause, the reply is read aloud, and the microphone waits until the reading is done. Dictation uses its own Talking to AI settings there by itself.
• OpenAI dictation, with your own key. If you have your own OpenAI key, you can choose OpenAI as the speech engine. It is off until you choose it, it asks you first in plain words, and it says exactly what is sent: your speech goes to OpenAI and is billed to your account. You pick the model from OpenAI’s own current list. Your computer’s own engines stay the default.
• My Dictation Instructions tell Tidy Dictated Text (Ctrl+F3) how you like your writing: “write numbers as digits”, “British spelling”.
• Kinder to an older computer. Speech models are put away a few minutes after you stop dictating, giving their memory back, and an optional model that cannot keep up hands over to the built-in engine and tells you why.

More Dictation Settings… (Alt+A in Dictation Settings) holds the new choices. The user guide’s chapter on writing by voice has a section for each, and there is a new lesson, “Write by talking”, in Help > Tutorials….

Dictation: more you can do by voice

There is a lot more you can do just by talking now. All of it is in Tools > Dictation, all of it is in QUILL too on the same keys, and five new lessons in the “Working in a document” track of Help > Tutorials… walk you through it.

• Hear the punctuation. When a phrase is read back, its marks are said by name: “Hello comma world period”, whatever your screen reader’s punctuation level. The status bar and braille still show the real characters. Uncheck Say punctuation marks in the read-back in More Dictation Settings to hear just the words.
• Select and move by voice. Say “select” and some words, and dictation selects the nearest place they appear; whatever you say next replaces them. “Go to”, “go after”, “correct”, “select again”, “select previous”, “select sentence” and “select paragraph” work too. You hear where you landed, such as “Selected: the cat”. If the words are not there, your phrase is written as ordinary text and you hear “Not found, written as text.”
• Snippets and clips by voice. Say “insert snippet” and its name, “paste clip three”, or “insert abbreviation” and the abbreviation. “Copy all”, “copy that”, “show clips” and “show snippets” work too. A snippet goes in as one phrase, so one “scratch that” takes it back out.
• Letters, symbols and Markdown. “Caps on”, “all caps on” and “no space on” (handy for web addresses and file names). “Spell” and a word spells just that word, and “spell that” lets you spell out a word dictation got wrong. New marks for Markdown and code: backtick, code fence, tilde, vertical bar and caret. Start a phrase with “bullet”, “numbered item”, “block quote” or “heading two” to begin that kind of line.
• Switch between English and Spanish with Ctrl+Shift+F11, or by saying “switch to Spanish” and “cambiar a inglés”. You hear “Español.” or “English.”, and dictation remembers your choice.
• Live transcripts. Ctrl+Alt+Shift+PageDown writes everything you say into a new document of its own, for a meeting, a lecture or thinking out loud. It keeps going while you work in another document, starts a new paragraph at each long pause, and can put the time at the start of each paragraph if you check Time stamps in live transcripts.
• More time to think. Pause before a phrase is written has two new choices, Longer (2 seconds) and Longest (3 seconds). And when a phrase stops on a word like “the” or “and”, the next phrase carries on the same sentence instead of starting a new one.
• Dictation context for each document. Ctrl+Alt+Shift+PageUp lets you say what a document is, such as a formal letter or meeting notes, so OpenAI dictation and Tidy Dictated Text get your words right.
• Dictation Status. Alt+F9, also Tools > Dictation > Dictation Status, tells you what dictation is doing: on or off, the engine, the language, and any caps or spacing mode.
• Dictate in other programs. Press Dictate in Other Programs… in More Dictation Settings, and Quill Inkwell takes your settings and starts. Choose a key, and you can dictate into your browser, your email or any other program.

Turn a recording into text

Got a voice note, an interview or a lecture you need in writing? Press Shift+F5 (or Tools > Dictation > Transcribe a Recording…), choose the file, and keep working while QUILL Lite listens to it in the background. It uses the same speech engines you dictate with:

• Any model you have. The two built-in ones, any you downloaded in Speech Models, or OpenAI’s with your own key. The most accurate one on your computer is chosen for you, and the window tells you how long the recording is and about how long it will take.
• MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV, Ogg, Opus, FLAC and WMA, read with parts of Windows already on your computer, so there is nothing to download.
• A new document when it is ready. There is no destination picker and the transcript is not inserted into the document you were editing. Paragraphs start where the recording pauses. Timestamps, like [00:01:23], are off unless you check Add timestamps.
• Never in your way. You hear the percentage at each quarter and one sentence when it is done. Press Shift+F5 again to see how far it has got, or to stop it. Choose several files and they are done one after another.
• A length and time estimate. QUILL Lite reads duration from the audio metadata, and on Windows can use Media Foundation when another reader cannot determine the length.
• Private unless you say otherwise. With the models on your computer, nothing leaves it. OpenAI is never chosen for you, and asks before each recording is sent.

The user guide’s “Transcribing an audio file” has the whole story, including which model suits which recording.

Follow-up for testers: reopen a completed transcript

This is a follow-up after the 1.2.0 release, not part of 1.2.0. A completed transcript is now saved privately and linked from its completion notice in Notifications. Activate the notice when you are ready to open the result; it stays separate from the document you were editing.

Your recent documents, one key away

New: press Alt+Shift+0 (or choose File > Recent Documents…) to see every document you opened recently, newest first, and press Enter on the one you want. The list was always there, under File > Open Recent, but it was easy to miss. Now it has a key and a window of its own.

• Pin the documents you come back to, and they stay at the top however many others you open.
• Remove from List takes one off. The file is not touched.
• Open Containing Folder shows the file in File Explorer.
• Clear Unpinned… empties the list after asking. Pinned documents stay.
• Choose how many documents to remember, from 1 to 50, and whether files deleted from this computer drop off by themselves.

Alt+Shift+1 to Alt+Shift+8 reopen the first eight straight away, and pinned documents now come first there too. QUILL has the same window on the same key, and the same quick keys on its Open Recent menu. The user guide’s “Opening something you worked on recently” has the details.

Notes on your document

QUILL Lite now has inline notes, the same ones QUILL has, on the same keys. A note is a comment on a line or a selection: a question, a reminder, or what you think of a plan somebody sent you. They are on Tools > Inline Notes.

• Alt+Shift+I adds a note. The window shows the start of the text it is on, so you know you are in the right place.
• Alt+Shift+J and Alt+Shift+K move to the next and previous note, and Alt+Shift+H reads the one you are on (twice to change it).
• Alt+Shift+Delete deletes a note, after asking.
• Alt+Shift+Enter lists every note in the document. From there you can go to one, change or delete it, remove them all, copy them all, or save them as a Markdown or JSON file.

Notes are private unless you say otherwise. In a Markdown or HTML document you can write a note into the file instead, as a hidden comment that anyone who opens the file can read, including an AI assistant. That makes QUILL Lite a good way to review a plan an AI wrote: leave your notes in it and hand the file back. A script can then list or clear them with QuillLite.exe --notes.

Snippets moved to Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Home to make room for the notes on the same keys as QUILL. Alt+Shift+I is now Add Inline Note.

Checking off tasks

Put the cursor on a task line, such as - [ ] Write the tests, and press Ctrl+Alt+Enter (Format > Toggle Task Done). The box is checked and you hear how many tasks in the list are done. Press it again to uncheck, or select several tasks to check them together. Ctrl+Z takes it back.

A web page you can share

File > Export as HTML… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+End) saves a copy of your document as one web page, ready to email or put on a website. Task lists show as check boxes. Your document stays as it was.

Opening a document however it arrives

Copy a file in File Explorer, a path from a chat or a link from an email, then press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Enter (File > Open from Clipboard). QUILL Lite opens it. File > Open from URL… asks before it downloads anything, naming the website and the size, and shows you how the download is going. You can also drag files onto the window to open them.

Careful with your files

• An older file that is not UTF-8 now keeps every byte when you save it. Before 1.2, five rare characters in such a file could be lost. QUILL Lite also tells you, once, when a file is not UTF-8.
• If an old file’s letters come out wrong, Reopen with Encoding… in the File Encoding and Line Endings window (Ctrl+Alt+E) reads it again in the encoding you choose.
• If another program changed your file since you opened it, Ctrl+S asks before writing over that change.
• QUILL Lite now notices that change as it happens, not only when you save. If you have not touched the document, it can reload it for you, keeping your cursor on the same line, and tell you once. Otherwise it asks: Keep Mine, Reload from Disk or Save As…, with Keep Mine on Enter. A file deleted or moved away is said once, and your text stays. The settings are in Preferences under When another program changes the file, the same ones QUILL has. A remembered Reload never throws away unsaved edits; QUILL Lite asks instead.

These ideas come from PlanCake, a small app by Andre of Oire Software for reviewing AI-written plans. Thank you, Andre.

Things that work better now

• Portable copies now start from a folder whose name has a space in it.
• Coming back with Alt+Tab puts your focus in your document, even when Windows is slow about it. It leaves the Find box and menus alone.
• Big files and network drives no longer freeze the window. You hear “Opening” and the file’s name, the document is read-only until the text arrives, and closing the window cancels it. If it cannot be read, you are offered Try Again.
• Two copies at once no longer undo each other’s preferences. Each keeps the changes you made in it.
• Remove Quote Marks has a key that works. It is now Alt+Shift+. (Alt, Shift and the period), under Edit > Lines. Its old key was also the key that shows and hides QUILL from anywhere in Windows, so whenever QUILL was running, QUILL Lite never heard it. QUILL’s Unquote Lines moved to the same new key.
• Closing QUILL Lite is tidier. Documents sent to it while it closes are opened next time, an update check never starts on the way out, and an error message some people saw while exiting is gone.
• Insert > Markdown Tag appears only in Markdown documents. In a plain or rich text document it used to sit on the menu greyed out, which told you nothing. Now it is not there at all, and if you press Ctrl+Alt+I in one of those documents, QUILL Lite says “Markdown tags are for Markdown documents.” QUILL does the same.
• Next and Previous Heading say the heading once. In a rich document you used to hear it twice, “Heading 1: Two” and then “Heading 1, Two” a moment later. Now you hear it once. QUILL had the same echo and is fixed too.

Keys new in 1.2

The rest of the AI dictionary’s keys are in the user guide. All of these are in QUILL too, on the same keys.

Where to learn more

The QUILL Lite User Guide, in the Start menu beside QUILL Lite, covers everything here in thirteen chapters:

• Chapter 7, Checking your writing, for the thesaurus, Look Up and the AI dictionary.
• Chapter 8, What you hear, for Activity and Repeat Last Result.
• Chapter 9, Writing by voice, for holding Ctrl+F11, the live preview, talking to the AI and OpenAI dictation.
• Chapter 10, AI help, for a Google Gemini key and your ChatGPT plan.
• Chapter 11, Making QUILL Lite yours, for Find a setting and for making QUILL Lite your text editor.
• Chapter 12, Your files, updates and QUILL for All, for keeping QUILL Lite up to date.

Help > Tutorials (Ctrl+Alt+F1) has nine short lessons, if you would like a guided start.

If you get stuck, choose Help > Get Help from Support (Ctrl+Alt+F2), or write to support@community-access.org. A person at Community Access reads every message.