Setting up Cantari Scribe, step by step

1. Download the right installer

Go to the Scribe page and take the main Download for Windows button: that is the build for almost every PC (Intel or AMD, called x64). If your machine is Windows on ARM (Snapdragon laptops, some Surface models), take the Windows on ARM link beside it instead.

Grabbed the wrong one? Nothing breaks. Windows simply refuses to run it with a message that the app cannot run on your PC; download the other build and carry on.

2. The SmartScreen prompt (expected, once)

When you run the installer, Windows shows a blue SmartScreen panel saying it protected your PC. This is because the beta installer is not yet code-signed, not because anything is wrong: we print the same fact next to the download button.

Click More info, then Run anyway. You will only see this at install and at updates until code signing lands, at which point the prompt disappears for everyone.

3. Connect your account with the pairing code

Scribe opens on a single Connect to Cantari button. Click it: the app shows an 8-character code and opens cantari.io/link in your browser, signed in as you (or asking you to sign in first; the page brings you back).

Check that the code in the browser matches the code in the app, then click Approve this device. Within a few seconds the app flips to your account view by itself. No password is ever typed into Scribe; the approval mints a device token you can revoke any time from your account page.

4. Your first dictation

Click into anything you can type in: a document, an email draft, the address bar, anywhere the cursor blinks. Hold Ctrl+Space and start talking. A small ink pill appears at the bottom of your screen with a coral meter that moves with your actual voice level: that is how you know it is hearing you.

Release the key when the sentence ends. The pill says Placing, then Placed, and the text appears at your cursor. A short hold (under a third of a second) is treated as an accidental tap and quietly ignored.

Holds cap at sixty seconds per take in the beta; the pill warns you as you approach it. Speak in sentences or short paragraphs and Scribe keeps up comfortably.

5. Make it yours

Open the settings window from the tray icon (the small wave-into-line glyph near the clock). The hotkey switches between Ctrl+Space, Ctrl+Shift+Space, and hold-F9: change it if another app already owns your first choice. Sounds (a tiny two-note cue when listening starts and a soft tap when text lands) and launch-at-startup are toggles.

The settings window also shows your dictation usage against your plan's monthly allowance, the same meter as the studio. The numbers and what they mean live in usage and limits.

If something is off

The troubleshooting guide covers the known dead ends: a busy microphone, a hotkey another app grabbed first, apps that resist synthetic paste, and what Signed out means. The short version: nothing Scribe does is destructive, so the worst case is a sentence that did not land.