# The overlay pill

The small floating control that stays on screen — what each state means and what every button on it does.

The pill is the only part of Blabb that is always on screen. It is deliberately small and
deliberately quiet: it tells you which stage of a dictation you are in, and it is where you
reach Retype, History and Settings without hunting for a window.

## What the states mean

The pill changes as a dictation moves through its stages.

None of these stages is labelled in words — the pill shows you rather than tells you.

| What you see | What is happening |
| --- | --- |
| Four small buttons, dots still | Blabb is running and waiting for your shortcut. |
| A single Stop button, dots moving | Audio is being captured. |
| Stop still showing, dots settled | You have finished, and your words are being transcribed and cleaned up. |
| Text arriving in your window | The dictation is being delivered. |
| Dots turn red | Something went wrong. The log records what it was. |

## The seven dots

The dots move with your voice while Blabb is listening. That is their whole job: they show
you are being picked up. If you speak and the dots stay still, Blabb is not hearing you — a
muted or blocked microphone is the usual reason.

The dots also turn red, which means something went wrong. See below.

## The buttons

Four buttons are available when Blabb is idle, and a different one while it is working.

| Button | When | What it does |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Retype | Idle | Types one of your recent dictations at the cursor again. |
| History | Idle | Opens the History window. |
| Settings | Idle | Opens Settings. |
| Close | Idle | Quits Blabb. |
| Stop | While active | Cancels the current dictation. |

Stop cancels — it does not finish early. Nothing is written to history, and anything not yet typed
is dropped. Text that has already been typed into the window stays there; it cannot be untyped.

To finish a dictation and keep the text, press your shortcut again — silence alone never ends a
recording.

> [!NOTE]
> Closing Blabb means the shortcut stops working. If you find yourself reopening it every
> morning, turn on **Start Blabb with Windows** in [General settings](/docs/configuration/general/).

## Moving it out of the way

Drag the pill anywhere on screen. It stays where you drop it, across sessions.

If it is still in your way, make it fainter rather than moving it again: **Floating window
visibility** in [Appearance settings](/docs/configuration/appearance/) runs from 10% to 100%
and starts fully opaque. The same page sets the **Listening indicator color** — the default, your
Windows accent colour, or one you pick yourself.

The cost of a low visibility setting is that a glance no longer tells you whether Blabb is
listening. If you dictate into several windows in a row, keep it readable.

## Red dots instead of dialogs

Blabb does not interrupt you with an error box. If a dictation fails, the dots turn red and
the log records what happened. That is a deliberate trade: a dialog stealing focus mid-sentence
costs you more than the failure did, and the detail is in the log when you want it — see
[Logs and support](/docs/common-issues/logs-and-support/).

There is one case where you cannot dictate at all until you act:

- **Windows is blocking the microphone.** Blabb says so in the [live captions](/docs/get-started/live-captions/)
  and opens the Windows microphone settings for you. Walk through
  [Microphone blocked](/docs/common-issues/microphone-blocked/).

## Next

- [Live captions](/docs/get-started/live-captions/) — seeing what Blabb is hearing while you speak.
- [Your dictation history](/docs/get-started/history/) — what was said, and what cleanup changed.
- [Appearance](/docs/configuration/appearance/) — opacity and indicator colour.