Bolo — speak anywhere in Windows

bolo.thebetawebsite.com · Microsoft Store

Hold a key. Speak. Let go. The text lands at your cursor.

Bolo is push-to-talk dictation for Windows. Hold a global hotkey in any app, speak (English, Urdu, Roman Urdu, or a mix), release, and Bolo pastes clean text at the caret. While you hold, a warm animated listener watches; on release it writes with a tiny pen, then slips away with a soft chime. It runs from the system tray — no Bolo servers storing your audio, and no telemetry.

Get the app

Live site	bolo.thebetawebsite.com
Microsoft Store	Bolo
Download	Bolo 0.1.19 for Windows

At a glance

• Compact animated overlay: listen rings → pen on notebook → hide with sound
• Works in Word, browsers, Slack, email, terminals — wherever the caret is
• Default hotkey Ctrl+Win; speak, release, paste
• Urdu / mixed speech → English, or keep the language you spoke
• Long takes cut on pauses and transcribe while you keep talking
• Settings for mic, language, cleanup, dictionary, history, and privacy

What you need

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
• The WebView2 runtime (already present on Windows 11; the installer can fetch the bootstrapper on Windows 10)
• A Groq API key, unless this build was compiled with BOLO_BUILTIN_GROQ_KEY
• For development: Rust stable, Node.js 22, and the Microsoft C++ build tools

The NSIS installer is per-user and does not need an administrator account. A global keyboard hook and simulated paste only work in apps running at the same privilege level, so an elevated window (for example a terminal opened as Administrator) will not receive dictation.

Run it

npm install
npm run tauri dev

Bolo starts in the tray. The settings window opens on first launch when this build has no built-in key and none is stored, or when you left-click the tray icon. A build with a built-in key does not ask for one. Right-click the tray icon for Settings and Quit. Closing the settings window hides it; the app keeps running.

Hold Ctrl + Win (the default), speak, and release. Ctrl + Space and a few other chords are presets in Settings.

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗