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History

Aria saves completed dictations so you can review their text. These controls apply to both Mac and terminal dictation. History also lists each transcript that Transcription saves to the default folder, and each request you send in a chat, with its reply. The assistant keeps its own conversation records.

Saving

Saving is on by default. In the Mac app, turn it off under Settings → Privacy → Save history, or run aria settings set history.enabled off. This stops future saves and leaves existing entries until you delete them or they expire.

Aria deletes old history on its own, so personal text doesn’t pile up on your Mac. It deletes text after 30 days. A transcript’s entry keeps the first KiB of its text, and the transcript file holds the rest. When the entry expires, the transcript file stays.

By default, only recordings Aria couldn’t transcribe keep their original audio. Retained recordings last up to 24 hours, with a 128 MiB total limit. Cancelled recordings and recordings with no accepted speech are not saved in history.

Review

On a Mac, open Aria. Your dictations, transcripts, and chats show by day, each with its own icon. Type to search them. Press ⌘↩ to read one. Click Copy, or press ⌘C, to use the text elsewhere. For a chat, Copy takes the reply. A long transcript shows its first 1 MiB.

Press Return to type an entry’s text into the app you came from. With no app behind Aria, Return opens the entry instead. Text over 64 KiB is too long to type, so copy it.

To see one section alone, click its icon under the search field, or press ⌃Tab to step through them. You can also type its name and choose Dictations, Transcripts, or Chats. Search then covers only that section. Click All, or press Esc, to see everything again.

Continue a chat

Questions you send with the Ask shortcut stay together as a chat. Aria names a new chat after its first question. History lists each chat once, under its name. Search finds it by any question, reply, quoted text, or its name.

  1. Select a chat and press ⌘↩. Aria shows its questions and replies, oldest first.
  2. Type a follow-up in the field at the bottom, then press Return. Aria sends it to the same assistant, in the same folder.

Press ↑ or ↓ to select a question or reply, and ⇧↑ or ⇧↓ to select more. Press ⌘C to copy the selection. With nothing typed in the field, Return types the selection into the app you came from. Press ⌘. to stop a reply, and ⌘E to rename the chat.

Run a prompt on an entry

  1. Select an entry, then press Tab or click Run Prompt.
  2. Choose a prompt, or press its number. Aria shows the result.
  3. Press Return to type the result into the app you came from, or press ⌘C to copy it.

With an entry selected, press ⌘ and a prompt’s number to run that prompt on it at once.

To run instructions of your own once, type them in place of a prompt’s name and choose Run “…”. Aria writes from them, as Write from them does, and names the result after their first line. To keep them as a prompt, press ⌘S on the result.

Press Esc on the result to cancel the run. If you close Aria instead, the run goes on. While Save history is on, Aria still saves its result.

With history on, Aria saves each result under its entry. An entry with results shows a chevron. Click it, or press →, to show the results under the entry. Press ← or Esc to hide them. Select a result and press Return to type it, or ⌘↩ to read it.

An entry keeps its 20 newest results, and all results share 8 MiB of text. Search doesn’t cover results. Deleting an entry, or clearing history, deletes its results too.

Ask about an entry or a result

You can ask your assistant about a dictation, a transcript, or a prompt result. Aria starts a new chat that quotes the text.

  1. Select an entry or a result, then press ⌘↩.
  2. On an entry’s page, press ↑ or ↓ to choose its text or one of its results.
  3. Type a question in the field at the bottom, then press Return.

Aria shows the new chat with the quoted text above your question. It names the chat after the text’s first line and lists it under Chats. With nothing typed in the field, Return types the text into the app you came from.

If you go back while your assistant replies, the entry shows a spinner. Click it to open the chat. A chat’s own row shows the same spinner while a question you asked in Aria replies. Questions from aria ask or your iPhone don’t show it. Select either row and press ⌘. to stop the reply.

A transcript works only when Aria has its whole text. The text can be at most 128 KiB.

List entries in a terminal

From a terminal, run:

aria history list

The list shows each entry’s ID, section, status, recording availability (available, expired, or unavailable), and the first 512 bytes of its text. It lists each chat once, under its newest question, with the chat’s name in brackets. To list one section, add --section dictation, --section transcription, or --section chat. To list only entries that mention something, add --query TEXT. It matches the text, the entry’s name, the app’s name, and a chat’s reply, quoted text, and name, ignoring case. For scripts, add --json to print one JSON array. Each entry’s section is dictation, transcription, or chat. Each entry also carries created_at_ms, application, and the chat it belongs to.

To print one entry’s full text, or the prompt results saved under it, run:

aria history show 42
aria history results 42

To print a whole chat, rename it, or delete it, use its name from the list:

aria history chat show NAME
aria history chat rename NAME "NEW_NAME"
aria history chat delete NAME

Add --assistant for a chat with an assistant other than your usual one. chat show prints the chat’s quoted text first. With --json, it prints one object with the chat’s quote and its asks.

Dictate into history

To save a dictation without typing it anywhere, open Aria and choose New Dictation. Speak, then tap the Aria key to stop. Aria saves the text while Save history is on. From a terminal, run aria dictate --history-only.

Rename

From a terminal, give an entry a name by its ID:

aria history rename 42 "Weekly plan"

A name is one line of up to 256 bytes. Search matches it as well as the text. To remove the name, run the command without one.

Retry

If an entry still has its recording, open it in Aria and click Transcribe Again. From a terminal, use the entry’s ID. For example:

aria history retry 42

Retry replaces the entry’s text without keeping the previous version. It does not type or copy the result into another app. A failed retry leaves the previous text in place.

Retries use the same local or server setting as dictation. Enabled voice filtering runs locally before upload. The server must provide the requested engine. A failed retry leaves the saved text unchanged and never falls back to a local model.

Keep successful recordings

To make future successful dictations available for retry, enable Settings → Privacy → Keep audio for 24 hours, or run:

aria settings set history.keep_audio on

The same 24-hour and 128 MiB limits apply. Originals can include background speech and voices excluded from the text.

To stop keeping future successful recordings:

aria settings set history.keep_audio off

Existing recordings continue to expire.

Delete

In Aria, open an entry and click Delete… to remove it. To remove every entry and retained recording, type “clear” and choose Clear All History…. Clear includes entries outside the current search.

To delete a chat, select or open it, then press ⌘⌫. Aria deletes its questions, replies, and prompt results, but not the assistant’s own records. Aria can’t delete a chat while the assistant is replying.

From a terminal, delete one entry by its ID, or clear everything:

aria history delete 42
aria history clear

Answer y or yes to confirm. Any other answer cancels. In a script, add --yes. To clear one section, add --section as for aria history list. Clearing can’t be undone, and it leaves saving settings unchanged.

Deleting a transcript’s entry, or clearing history, also deletes its transcript file. Clearing history doesn’t remove clipboard copies, the assistant’s conversation records, or transcript files that history doesn’t list. Deletion isn’t secure erasure and can’t remove backups. Read Privacy for the other places text can go.