Settings

Use the Mac app’s Settings window for everyday choices. Use ~/.aria/config.yaml for engines, model paths, and service options. App preference changes apply immediately; file changes require a restart.

Mac app

Open Settings… from Aria’s menu:

• General controls launch at login, the status pill, and dictation-history saving.
• Shortcuts chooses right Option or Fn for the dictation hotkey, and sets the Ask shortcut.
• Dictation selects language and output, and can mute your speakers while recording. Show Advanced Options contains delivery, voice filtering, project vocabulary, stopping, and retained audio.

The language picker offers English, the default, and automatic detection. These choices still depend on the selected model’s supported languages.

Voice speed

For a default speaking rate, open ~/.aria/config.yaml in a text editor. If it already has a tts section, edit that section rather than adding another:

tts:
  rate: 1.2

This makes speech 1.2 times the normal rate. For a change to just one utterance, use aria say --rate.

Apply changes

After editing the file, inspect what your terminal would load:

aria config show

For the example above, find tts.rate and check that it is 1.2. The output shows each setting’s source. It describes this shell’s configuration, not a snapshot of the running service.

Restart the registered service to apply file changes:

aria service stop
aria service start
aria service status

Starting a service that is already running does not reload it.

Restart it too after installing a tool such as claude. On a Mac, Aria reads your shell’s PATH each time it starts. On Linux, the service keeps the PATH it was installed with, so run aria service install again. Do the same if the aria binary moves.

Other settings

Use the annotated configuration file for the full reference. Unknown fields are rejected. App preferences such as recognition language and history saving do not belong in config.yaml.

Environment variables affect only your terminal, not the background service.