Frequently asked questions

QUILL is a writing program for Windows and macOS, made first for people who use screen readers. Everything works from the keyboard. When you do something, QUILL tells you how it turned out. And it never goes online unless you say so.

QUILL stands for Quality, Usable, Inclusive, Lightweight and Literate. Those five words are what we try to live up to.

Anyone who writes. We think most about people who are blind, people who use a screen reader or only a keyboard, and students, researchers, developers and accessibility professionals. If other editors have felt noisy or hard to find your way around, QUILL was made with you in mind.

On Windows, you need Windows 10 or later, 64-bit. QUILL works with NVDA, JAWS and Narrator. On a Mac, you need macOS 12 or later. You do not need to install anything else first. Some larger extras, like extra voices, document converters and braille tables, are offered when you first reach for them, so the first install stays small.

Yes. QUILL is free and open source under the MIT license, and every feature is free for everyone. If you would like to donate, you can, and supporters are thanked by name as Golden Quills in the About dialog. You never have to.

A small team at Community Access, and a lot of the people who use it. Testers' reports decide what we fix next. Fixes people send in ship with their name in the release notes. Several things on this site started as a suggestion on a mailing list.

They're the two characters you'll meet around this site. QUILLBert is the curious QUILLVille porcupine: he finds things, tries things, and points you at something worth a look. QUILLBee is the guide, with the tips, the shortcuts and the details worth knowing. QUILLBert discovers, QUILLBee explains. Whenever one of them speaks, the name comes first, so your screen reader tells you who it is. Jeff introduces them properly on the Meet QUILLBert and QUILLBee page.

Start whichever way suits you. You do not need all of these.

• If you like to read at your own pace: QUILL, Step by Step is a manual written to be read aloud. It has seventeen short chapters, one skill each, with a chance to practice. You can also download QUILL, Step by Step as an EPUB and read it in ElevenReader, Voice Dream or any reading app.
• If you like to listen: the QUILL Cast audio course is free. It starts at the installer and goes on from there, with a little homework after each episode.
• If you like to learn by doing: the hands-on tutorials begin with your first hour in QUILL.
• If you want to look something up: the user guide covers everything.

Inside QUILL, a short setup wizard runs the first time you open it, and F1 explains any command.

A short setup wizard walks you through a few choices. If you would rather skip it, press Cancel and QUILL starts with sensible settings. The voices that come with Windows work straight away. Anything bigger is offered only when you first need it.

The basics will feel familiar. The menus are where you expect them, and Ctrl+S saves. You can keep QUILL small while you learn: choose the Essential or Writer profile, and move up to Developer, Accessibility Professional or Full QUILL when you are ready. If you cannot remember where a command lives, press Ctrl+Shift+P and type part of its name. Every command has its own F1 help.

Yes, both. Verbosity settings decide how much QUILL says. You can swap spoken messages for sounds, or turn them off. QUILL does not announce dialogs opening and closing by default, because your screen reader already does that.

Yes. They are separate, free Windows apps, made the same way as QUILL: keyboard first, and built for screen readers. You can use any of them on its own.

• Quill Radio plays internet radio, and much more.
• QUILL Cast is a podcast player. Every episode reads as a whole sentence, so one arrow press tells you what it is and whether you have heard it.
• QUILL Lite is a simple text editor. If you know Notepad or WordPad, almost every key you know works.
• Quill Converter changes audio and video files from one format into another, on your own computer.
• QUILL Transcribe types what you say into the program you are using: an email, a web form, a document. It is released on 1 November 2026, and there is no download until then.

Not sure whether you want QUILL or QUILL Lite? The comparison page helps you choose.

No. Each app installs and runs by itself. If you do have more than one, Quill Radio, QUILL Cast and QUILL share your favorites, history and settings, so you do not have to set things up twice.

When an app offers both, most people should choose the installer. It gives the app a Start menu entry and an uninstaller. The portable copy is a ZIP file you unpack into any folder, even a USB stick, and run from there. Choose it if you cannot install software on the computer you are using.

Press F1 anywhere in the app to hear what the window is for and what the focused control does. Each app also has its own user guide. And you can always write to support@community-access.org. A person reads every message.

The current release is QUILL 0.9.0 Beta 2. Pick one of the links below. If you are not sure, choose the first one.

QUILL 1.0 is not released yet, so there is no 1.0 download to look for. The user guide is written for 1.0, which is why it sometimes mentions things the beta does not have yet. When 1.0 is ready, it will be on this page, and QUILL's Check for Updates will tell you.

• Windows installer (online). Most people want this one. It adds QUILL to your Start menu and fetches extras the first time you use them.
• Windows installer (offline). A bigger download with every extra included. Good for slow or restricted internet.
• Windows portable ZIP (online). Unpack it into any folder and run it. Nothing to install. Fetches extras the first time you use them.
• Windows portable ZIP (offline). The portable copy with every extra included.
• Mac disk image. Open it and drag QUILL to your Applications folder.

0.9.0 is the last beta before QUILL 1.0. Everything we planned for 1.0 is already in it, including the optional AI tools, the Accessible Vault, Story Studio, GLOW, Hey QUILL voice control, reading scanned documents, restore points, Read Aloud in many languages, Table Studio and the Quillin Hub. You can read more in the 1.0.0 release notes.

It means nothing new is being added between 0.9.0 and 1.0. Every change is a bug fix or a smoother edge, and most of them come from your reports. QUILL 1.0 will do the same things as 0.9.0, with fewer surprises.

QUILL is well tested, but you may still find rough edges, and your reports help us smooth them. To keep your words safe, QUILL saves automatically, keeps backups and restore points, and offers to recover your work after a crash.

If people report that a feature is misbehaving badly, we can switch off just that one feature until the fix is ready. QUILL tells you out loud which feature was switched off and why. An advisory can only turn something off, never on, and it is lifted the same way once the fix ships. If you want the final say, setting QUILL_IGNORE_FEATURE_LOCKS=1 on your computer overrides it.

Yes, each time it starts, unless you turn that off in Preferences. The check sends nothing about you or your documents. It is also how safety advisories reach you, which is why it starts out on. Safe Mode always skips it, and downloaded updates are checked to make sure they are genuine.

In QUILL, choose Report a Bug from the Help menu and QUILL prepares the report for you. You can also open an issue on GitHub, or email support@community-access.org. We treat accessibility problems as bugs, not as wishes. Right now, before 1.0, your reports matter more than anything else.

NVDA, JAWS and Narrator on Windows. We aim for each one to work equally well. If something only works well in one of them, we do not count it as finished. QUILL notices which screen reader you are running and speaks through it.

When you run a command, you hear the result. For example: "Wrapped 3 words in bold", "Nothing selected" or "Saved." If a command ever does something without telling you, we treat that as a bug.

Press Alt+Shift+E to open the Spoken Echo. It keeps the last twenty things QUILL said, in a list you can arrow through, read again and copy. Pressing an information command twice quickly also opens the Echo, instead of repeating it.

Yes. Every feature works without a mouse, and focus never gets stuck in a dialog. If you want to change a key, the Keymap Editor tells you which command already uses it before you take it, and it can repair broken keys with one press.

Yes. You can start a selection, then grow it by word, sentence, line, paragraph or block, and hear what you have. You never need to see the highlight.

Yes. Your screen reader drives the display, and QUILL keeps its messages short so they read well in braille. QUILL can also make braille: it translates and embosses through liblouis, edits BRF files without changing a byte you did not touch, and checks your page layout against what your embosser can do.

Yes. QUILL follows your system theme, or you can choose light or dark. Each has strong contrast, color is never the only way something is shown, and there is very little movement on screen.

The menus and dialogs can be translated, and the first community translation is already here: Italian, by Elena Brescacin. To switch, go to Tools, then Writing and Language, then Change Display Language. Read Aloud can read your documents in many languages (see the speech section below), and spelling dictionaries for more languages are offered when you need them. Would you like to translate QUILL into your language? The translation chapter of the user guide shows you how.

Please report it like any other bug. Tell us which screen reader you use, what you heard, and what you expected to hear. Often the fix ships with your name on it.

Yes. Your text stays clean while you write, and the formatting is kept out of the way. Use the Format menu for bold, italic, underline, fonts, sizes, colors, highlights, alignment, spacing and styles. To check what is applied, choose Describe Formatting at Cursor, and you will hear something like "Arial, 14 point, centered, bold."

Yes, built for screen readers. Press Alt+F3 to open a pane that shows your document as codes and text, such as [Bold On], [Font: Arial], [Center] and [Hard Return]. You can arrow from code to code, and jump from a [Bold On] to its matching [Bold Off] to hear how far the bold reaches.

A plain .txt file cannot hold fonts or colors. So QUILL can save them in a small companion file, called an Illumination, next to your text file. Open the .txt in QUILL and your formatting comes back. Open it anywhere else and it is just plain text. If another program changes the text, QUILL notices and opens it plain, so old formatting never lands in the wrong place.

Yes. Each time you save, QUILL quietly keeps a copy. Choose File, then Restore Previous Version, and you will hear a list like "Today at 4:12 PM, 2,341 words." Restoring keeps a copy of what you have now first, so you can change your mind. Or open the old version in a new tab instead. Older copies are thinned out over time, but your five newest saves are always kept.

They save you typing. An abbreviation turns a few letters into longer text as you type. A snippet is a bit of text with blanks to fill in, choices, dates and a place for the cursor to land. A smart trigger such as =todo(10) makes something for you when you press Enter on that line. Macros record a series of commands and play them back. You hear each one happen, and you can undo it.

Twelve extra clipboards that you can name and pin. Paste from any slot with a key. Press it twice quickly to hear what is in the slot before you paste. Copy to Next Empty Slot skips the ones you have pinned. The slots are still there after you restart, and you can reach them from the system tray too.

You can search for plain words, wildcards or regular expressions, and QUILL remembers your past searches. Before a big Replace All, you can review every change first. The Regex Helper explains a pattern in plain words. Compare Mode lets you step through the differences between your document and another file, or the clipboard.

Yes. Table Studio gives you a grid you move around with the arrow keys. When you move across a row, you hear each column's heading. Press F2 to edit a cell, and Alt with an arrow key to move a row or column. Start a table from nothing, or open a CSV or TSV file. Then put it in your document as a Markdown or HTML table with proper headings, or save it back as CSV.

A Notebook gathers a folder of files into one place to work, with bookmarks, snapshots and writing goals if you want them. Sticky Notes let you jot down a passing thought without leaving your document. Inline notes attach a comment to the exact words it is about, and stay with those words as you edit.

They come from the WordPerfect tradition. Repeat Next Command runs a command as many times as you ask. Restore Deleted Text brings back any of your last three deletions, separately from Undo. Describe Character at Cursor tells you exactly which character is under the cursor, even invisible ones. You can also make a document read-only so a stray key cannot change it.

Plain text, Markdown, HTML, Word (.docx and the older .doc), RTF, EPUB, PDF, PowerPoint, Excel, Apple Pages, OpenDocument, CSV and TSV, Jupyter notebooks, JSON, YAML, TOML, XML, SQLite and braille files (.brf, .brl and .pef). When a file is hard to read in, QUILL tells you honestly how well it went. You can also open a web page straight into a tab with Open from URL.

Yes. Save as Word, for example, and your headings become real Word headings, each line becomes a paragraph, and your formatting comes with it. QUILL then tells you what happened: "Saved as report.docx, Word format. You are still editing QUILL text; each save converts it to Word." QUILL will never overwrite a PDF, EPUB or spreadsheet you opened with plain text. It explains, and helps you save somewhere safe instead.

Yes, that is what document rescue is for. When a PDF looks scanned, QUILL asks if you would like it read. It then reads the page images on your own computer, for free, with the Tesseract engine. That is a one-time download. Lines it is unsure about are marked so you can check them. Only if nothing on your computer can read a document does QUILL offer an online service, using your own key, and it asks you before every single upload.

Yes. QUILL translates and embosses braille with liblouis. The braille tables are a small download the first time you need them. Braille Repair checks your page layout against your embosser. And one export makes a DAISY 2.02 talking book, the kind a Victor Reader Stream or Plextalk can play, with your headings as places to jump to.

Use the batch conversion wizard. Pick a folder and a ready-made choice such as Clean Word Document, Accessible HTML Page, EPUB Book, Print PDF or Plain Text for Screen Readers. QUILL converts in the background with Pandoc, which it fetches the first time, and tells you when it is done.

Yes, if you want to. QUILL can open and save over FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, S3 and HTTPS. It can browse a GitHub repository, and it can edit a file over SSH, sending it back each time you save and keeping a backup. All of this is off until you turn it on.

You can post to Mastodon, with a spelling check before you post if you like. An early WordPress connection lets you browse your site, but it cannot post yet. We will turn that on once we trust it. You can also export your work as Word, EPUB, DAISY, an audiobook, or a small accessible website made from a vault.

In your Windows or Mac user profile, or in the QUILL folder itself if you use the portable copy. Settings are saved in a way that a crash cannot leave half-written. Passwords and keys go in your system's own secure store, never in a file.

Yes. QUILL saves as you go, at the interval you choose, and offers to recover your work the next time you open it. It keeps a backup every time you save, remembers your undo history between sessions, and keeps restore points for older versions. Even if the power goes off in the middle of a save, the file you already had is left alone.

Any Windows voice you have, in any language. Kokoro voices that run on your own computer, in English, Spanish, French, Hindi, Italian and Brazilian Portuguese. Piper voices, one click to download. eSpeak NG, which speaks a great many languages. The classic DECtalk. Online voices such as ElevenLabs, with your own key. And, as an experiment, the voices in your web browser. Read Aloud, audiobook export and batch speech all use the voice that matches your document's language.

Hey QUILL lets you control QUILL by voice, and it all runs on your computer. You can hold a key and say a command, such as "save file" or "next heading". You can have a back-and-forth, where QUILL waits for you to stop speaking. You can turn on a wake word, and the status bar always shows when the microphone is listening. And you can ask Ask Quill a question out loud, then press Send yourself. Short sounds tell you what state it is in.

No. Voice can only run commands that are safe. Closing without saving, sending, publishing and deleting are simply not things it can do. Voice is off until you turn it on, it stays off in Safe Mode, and saying "cancel" always works.

Yes. Press Ctrl+F11, talk, and pause. Each time you pause, what you said is typed and read back to you. Everything it needs is already inside the program, so there is nothing to download. QUILL also has Locked Dictation (Ctrl+F9), which records a passage and types it out afterwards. No recording is kept, and nothing you say leaves your computer unless you choose OpenAI or a cloud speech service with your own account. Larger speech models for better accuracy are an optional download. The complete dictation guide has every key, every spoken command and every setting.

It turns recordings into documents. First QUILL types out what was said in an audio or video file, and can translate it or note who is speaking. Then pick what you want from it: Meeting Minutes, Action Items, Executive Summary, Study Notes, Q&A, a Follow-Up Email, Key Quotes, a Decisions Log, or a clean draft. You can make your own choices too, and you can have a folder handle new recordings as they arrive.

Yes. Open the Audio Studio from Tools, then Speech, then Audio Studio. It walks you through one of three jobs. You can turn a folder of documents into an audiobook with chapters, as M4B or MP3. You can join a folder of recordings into one book, with each file as a chapter, and check it before they are joined. Or you can open an audiobook you already have in the Chapter Workbench. Audiobooks can also be translated into about 37 languages, with a voice to match. If you change one chapter, only that chapter is made again.

Yes. The Chapter Workbench opens any MP3 or M4B, with or without chapters. Play to where a chapter should start and press Split at playhead. You can also move, join, rename or put back chapters. Propose AI titles listens to the start of each chapter on your computer and asks your AI for a short title. You review each one before it is used.

Yes. The Chapter Workbench can write the podcast feed for you, without going online. It can turn a whole folder into a show, with a description for each episode and an accessible show notes page. It can upload your show to your own server over SFTP, telling you how it is going. Or it can send your audio to your own Auphonic account to be polished. QUILL asks before anything goes online, and your passwords stay in Windows Credential Manager.

We work hard to make sure they do. QUILL only loads a model when you need it and puts it away when you stop. On a computer with little memory, QUILL keeps just one small model loaded at a time, and tells you once that it is doing so. You do not need a special graphics card.

A way to link your notes together, by ear. A vault is just a folder of Markdown notes. Type [[Note Title]] to link to another note, and follow the link with a key. Ask "what links here?" to hear every note that mentions this one, each read in its sentence. You can also group notes by tags, search them all, and jump to any note by typing part of its name. Your notes stay plain text files that belong to you.

Yes. Templates can fill in the date and title, ask you questions out loud, and put the cursor where you want it. Open Today's Note gives you a daily journal, and you can step to the day before or after. Export Vault as Website makes a small accessible website with your links working. Sync Vault keeps your vault in step with your own Git server, and if two changes clash it tells you instead of overwriting anything.

A place to organize a whole book. It lists your parts, chapters and scenes from the headings in your Markdown files, alongside Characters, Places, Plot threads, Research and Brainstorm. Each character has a small form to fill in, saved right in their file. When you are ready, Compile Manuscript joins it all into one document you can export any way you like. Your project is an ordinary folder of text files, so nothing is locked away.

GLOW helps you check a document for accessibility problems and fix them. It works on your own document, or on a Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF or EPUB file. Each problem it finds tells you what is wrong, how serious it is, and what to do about it in plain words. You review every fix before it is made, and fixes to a file are saved as a new copy, so your original is never touched. GLOW runs on your computer, and asks before using anything online.

No. There is no tracking and no usage reporting. The only thing QUILL does online on its own is check for updates when it starts, and that check sends nothing about you or your documents. You can turn it off.

Only when you send it yourself. That might be an AI request you approved, a scanned page you agreed to upload, an online voice you chose, or a post you published. QUILL never goes online behind your back, and we test every release to make sure of it.

In your computer's own secure store: Windows Credential Manager, or the Keychain on a Mac. They are never kept in a settings file. If QUILL ever makes a crash report, passwords and personal folder names are removed from it first.

Yes. Writing, speech, dictation, reading scanned pages, braille and AI models on your own computer all work without the internet. Anything that needs to go online is an extra you choose to turn on.

AI is optional, and it is off until you turn it on. While it is off, the AI features are hidden and nothing AI-related runs. When it is on, you choose each time you send something, and you can follow its progress. You can read more about how we use AI responsibly.

No. The setup wizard offers the free choices first. For the most privacy, run a model on your own computer: no account, no internet, and nothing leaves your computer. For better answers, get a free OpenRouter key, and QUILL picks a good free model for you. Free models are labelled "Free" in the list. Free online models can be slow, and anything private is best kept on your own computer.

A conversation with an AI that can see the document you are working on. Ask it to help you write, edit, summarize or reorganize. If it wants to change your document, it shows you the change first, and you accept or reject it. If you accept, one Undo takes it all back. It never changes your text without asking.

Models on your own computer through Ollama, plus OpenAI, Claude, Google Gemini, OpenRouter, and other services that work like OpenAI. Each one that needs a key has a Get API Key button that opens the right sign-up page. You pick models from a list, so you never have to remember their names.

If you have GitHub Copilot, yes. Choose the Copilot engine, and QUILL reads you a short code to enter in your browser. No API key needed. The Claude Agent and OpenAI Agents engines need an Anthropic or OpenAI API key. A ChatGPT or Claude chat subscription does not include an API key, so it cannot run those engines. Whichever engine you use, you approve every change to your document.

One place for your Prompts, Skills and Agents. A prompt you use often can grow into a Skill with several steps, and a Skill can grow into an Agent. They all use the AI connection you set up once, and you can share them on the Quillin Hub.

No. Before any AI feature sends your text, it asks you. It tells you while it works and tells you when it is done. If you use a model on your own computer, nothing goes online at all.

A Quillin is a small add-on that gives QUILL new commands, snippets, menus or keys. There are two kinds. Some are just snippets of text, with no code at all. Others run a little Python or Node.js program, kept apart from QUILL itself. Each Quillin has a manifest.json file that says what it does.

A Quillin can only do what it says it needs. If it wants to read your files or go online, QUILL asks you each time. Quillins with code run separately from QUILL, so if one crashes, your document is fine.

The community store for QUILL, which is not open yet. It has Quillins, AI agents and skill packs, sound packs, keyboard packs, verbosity packs and pronunciation dictionaries. Everything is checked before it is published and signed so you know where it came from. The Hub and QUILL's Quillin Manager both tell you whether an item is signed. Until the Hub opens, Submit to Quillin Hub still checks your work on your own computer, so it is ready on the day the Hub opens.

Built-in Quillins come with QUILL. We have reviewed them, and they are on from the start. Quillins from other people follow the same safety rules but start out off. Use the Quillins Manager to look at them, turn them on or off, reload them or remove them. It also tells you whether each one is signed.

Only if it says it needs to, and you say yes each time. A Quillin cannot quietly read your files or go online.

Start with the Quillin tutorial, which builds one with you from the beginning. The reference that goes with it covers everything else. If you only want snippets, the Snippet Wizard asks you questions and builds the Quillin for you, with no coding.

Not for a snippet Quillin. A snippet is text with blanks QUILL fills in for you, such as ${selection}, ${date}, ${word_at_cursor} and ${uuid}. That is enough for a lot of everyday jobs.

Yes. Quillins with code can use Python or Node.js. Both follow the same safety rules and ask for permission the same way.

In QUILL, choose Tools, then Quillins, then Submit to Quillin Hub. QUILL checks your Quillin on your own computer and reads you the result before anything is sent. If you prefer the command line, run python -m quill.tools.quillin_lint <dir> --strict, which does the same check.

In QUILL, choose Tools, then Quillins, then Submit to Quillin Hub. Pick your manifest file. The Hub is not open yet, so for now QUILL checks your file and tells you it is ready. Once the Hub opens and your file passes the check, the Hub reviews it. When it is published, it is signed, and people will hear "Signed by" with your name.

The Quillin Author Covenant asks you to: tell people how each action turned out; make everything work from the keyboard; ask only for the permissions you need; never go online or collect data quietly; keep your code readable; and license it clearly. You agree to it when you submit.

Please do not post it publicly. Follow the private steps in our security policy.

A Quillin starts with no permissions at all. It must ask you before it reads your files or goes online, every time. Quillins with code run separately from QUILL, with strict limits on what they can use. Everything on the Hub is signed and checked, and we test every release for anything that goes online without asking.

Safe Mode starts QUILL with all the optional parts switched off: no AI, no watch folders, no Quillins and no update check. If QUILL is acting strangely, it is a good first thing to try. To use it, start QUILL with --safe-mode.

Yes. Updates, installers, extras and the GLOW engine are all checked to make sure they are genuine and complete. If an install fails, it is undone. Safety advisories are signed the same way, so nobody can switch off your features with a fake one.

There are lots of ways: code, documentation, accessibility testing, Quillins, sound packs, keyboard packs, and honest bug reports. Right now, before 1.0, testing and telling us what you find helps the most. The contribution guidelines show you where to start.

Yes. One tester's eight-line report about saving led us to rebuild how QUILL saves. A suggestion on a mailing list changed the front page of this website. People who send fixes see their name in the release notes. If something bothers you, please tell us.

A few: the core of QUILL never depends on the screen code, settings are always saved safely, only the main thread touches the screen, and nothing goes online without asking. The contribution guidelines and the product requirements document explain them.

The governance document explains how decisions are made, and the maintainers list says who looks after the project.

Ask in GitHub Discussions, or use the issue templates for a bug or an idea. You can also write to support@community-access.org. We read the community mailing lists too.