Free software that talks to you, made for screen reader users

Every command in QUILL says how it went: "Wrapped 3 words in bold", "Nothing selected", "Saved." It works the same way with NVDA, JAWS and Narrator, and QUILL finds your screen reader for you. Add-ons speak through the same channel as everything else.

The Spoken Echo

Speech is gone as soon as it is spoken. The Spoken Echo (Alt+Shift+E) keeps the last twenty announcements in a list you can arrow through, read again and copy. Press an information command twice, such as Describe Formatting or Document Summary, and the Echo opens instead of speaking again.

Describe anything

Describe Formatting at Cursor tells you what is in effect, such as "Arial, 14 point, centered, bold". Describe Character at Cursor names the character under the cursor. Every one of more than 460 commands has its own F1 help, so if you can reach it, QUILL can explain it.

You can do everything from the keyboard. Dialogs put focus where you expect it, have a clear default button, and never trap you. The command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) finds any command by name.

A keymap manager that answers questions

The Keymap Editor searches two ways from one box. Type part of a command name to find it, or type a shortcut such as ctrl+alt+m to learn which command has it, or that it is free. Record Keys lets you press the keys instead of typing them. If a key is taken, QUILL tells you which command has it and offers to move it. Run Diagnostics checks the whole keymap for problems and offers to fix them.

Keyboard packs

You can save a whole set of shortcuts as a .kqp keyboard pack and share it, or install one someone else made, such as a WordPerfect-style layout. Packs can be shared on the Quillin Hub.

You decide how much QUILL says. Verbosity profiles set how much detail you hear. Indentation can be spoken as "4 spaces", "1 tab", or not at all. Sounds for opening and closing dialogs are off at first, because your screen reader already tells you, and one setting turns them back on.

Sound events and sound packs

Saving, errors and the voice control cues each have their own sound. You can swap them all with a sound pack, change just one, or turn any of them off, and share your sounds on the Hub.

Braille-aware, byte-exact

Status messages are short, with the meaning first, so they fit on a braille display. BRF files are saved exactly as they came, down to the last space and form feed. Before you emboss, QUILL can find the longest line and the longest page, so you know they fit your embosser.

Select by word, sentence, line, paragraph or block, and grow or shrink the selection as you go. You never need to see the screen to know what is selected.

Move like the document is yours

Move by heading, paragraph, list, table, bookmark, code block, link or search result. The Outline Navigator shows the whole shape of your document: headings, bookmarks, sticky notes and search matches. Alt+1 through Alt+0 jump straight to an open document.

Places that remember you

Named bookmarks stay with the file you set them in, from one day to the next. When you reopen a document, the cursor goes back to where you left it. Notes you add stay with the text they are about, even as you edit.

A status bar that acts

The status bar shows word count, selection, spelling, background tasks, autosave, the copy tray and your screen reader. You can move to any of these and act on it from the keyboard.

You can change the language QUILL uses, choose the system, light or dark theme, and keep QUILL in the system tray, with the Copy Tray on the tray menu. A notification center collects updates and other news so they do not interrupt your writing.

QUILL parla italiano: the first community translation

QUILL's first translation came from the community. Elena Brescacin (elettrona) translated the menus, dialogs and spoken messages into Italian. To switch, choose Tools > Writing and Language > Change Display Language. Spoken messages change right away, and menus change after a restart. Anything not yet translated stays in English. Grazie mille, Elena.

We test it. Every time the code changes, automatic checks look at every dialog and every announcement. Every night a test robot opens the real app, presses real keys, and checks what a screen reader would find: named controls, correct window titles, an Escape key that works, and the words QUILL really speaks.

Bold, italic, underline, fonts, sizes, colors, alignment, line spacing, indents and styles all work, and you never have to listen to markup. When you save, the formatting becomes real Word, RTF or HTML formatting.

Reveal Codes, reborn

Remember Reveal Codes from WordPerfect? Press Alt+F3 and your document becomes a list of codes and text, such as [Bold On], [Font: Arial], [Center] and [Hard Return]. Each one is read on its own as you move. Jump from a [Bold On] to its [Bold Off] to hear how far it reaches. F6 moves between the editor, the codes and the status bar.

Illuminations

A plain .txt file cannot hold fonts or colors. So QUILL can save a small extra file next to it, called an Illumination, that holds the formatting. Other programs still see plain text. Open it in QUILL again and your formatting comes back. If another program changed the text in the meantime, QUILL opens it plain rather than guess.

Type a short trigger and it grows into longer text. Snippets can hold dates, choices, questions, and where to leave the cursor. Smart triggers like =todo(10) or =rand(3,4) build text when you press Enter. Macros record and replay a series of commands, and word prediction offers to finish words for you.

The Copy Tray

Twelve clipboard slots that you can label and pin, and they are still there after a restart. Press a slot's key to paste it. Press it twice to hear what it holds first, and three times to open the tray.

Watch folders

Point QUILL at a folder and it can work on files as they arrive, for example to transcribe recordings or convert documents. It is off until you turn it on, and the Status Page tells you what it is doing.

Find and replace, with wildcards, regular expressions and history. If Replace All would change more than a few places, you get a list of every change first, with the text before and after.

The Regex Helper

The Regex Helper explains a pattern in plain words, piece by piece, so you can hear what it will match.

Compare Mode

Compare a document with another file or with the clipboard. Move from change to change and hear each one in context.

Spell check opens on F7. You can also move to the next or previous misspelling, get hints as you type, and keep your own word lists. Dictionaries for other languages, such as Spanish and French, download the first time you choose them. The thesaurus is on Shift+F7. QUILL can also check your spelling before you save or post.

Autoformat that respects you

Smart quotes follow your settings. QUILL can number your Markdown headings 1., 1.1, 1.1.1 and take the numbers off again. Footnote helpers insert footnotes, move between a footnote and its mark, and renumber them in order. Join Paragraph fixes lines that email broke apart, in one key press.

Notebooks gather a folder of files into one place, with bookmarks, snapshots and writing goals if you want them. Sticky Notes catch a passing thought without losing your place. Sessions bring back every open tab the way you left it. Trusted locations stop QUILL asking the same question about folders you use every day.

From the WordPerfect tradition: Repeat Next Command runs the next command as many times as you say, such as down twenty lines or delete ten words. Restore Deleted Text brings back any of the last three blocks you deleted, separately from Undo. Describe Character at Cursor tells you exactly what one character is. A read-only guard keeps reference documents safe from stray keys.

Table Studio makes tables easy to work with by ear. Build one, or open a CSV or TSV file as a grid. Moving across a row reads the column heading. F2 edits a cell, Alt with the arrow keys moves rows and columns, and Ctrl+Insert adds a row. Insert the table into your document as Markdown or HTML, or save it back as CSV. It works with NVDA and JAWS.

Profiles shape QUILL to fit you: Essential, Writer, Developer, Accessibility Professional, or Full QUILL. Keep it simple, or turn on automation, scripting, AI, remote files and add-ons when you want them.

Experimental editing controls

The Experimental tab offers other editing controls, including a plain Notepad-style one and Scintilla, the engine from Notepad++. Each is explained before you switch, and QUILL asks you twice, so nothing changes by accident.

Type a code such as \alpha, \sqrt, \ne or \pi, then a space or punctuation, and it turns into the symbol. There are 88 of these, based on the Word Math AutoCorrect list published by DAISY, and they work anywhere in your writing. Ten common formulas, such as the quadratic formula and the Pythagorean theorem, are ready to insert from Insert > Snippet Gallery..., so you do not have to type them from memory.

Explore Equation Structure... (Ctrl+Shift+Grave, F, or the Insert menu) walks you through the parts of a formula, such as the top and bottom of a fraction, or the base and the power. It uses an ordinary list, so you move with the arrow keys and choose with Enter. Back up one level steps out one layer, and Escape ends the session.

"Read this part aloud" uses real math speech once you install MathCAT, the same engine NVDA uses. Get it from Help > Download Optional Components > MathCAT math speech engine (about 3 MB). Without it, QUILL still reads the equation in its own simpler way.

Math Tutor

Math Tutor explains a selected equation in plain words: what it means and what each symbol is. It does not solve anything or change your document.

File > Export > Word Document saves each formula as a real Word equation. You can edit it in Word, and JAWS reads it as math, not as a picture or a string of letters. Open that file in QUILL again and you get your equation text back.

Plain text, Markdown, HTML, Word (.docx and the older .doc), RTF, EPUB, PDF, PowerPoint, Excel, Apple Pages, OpenDocument, CSV and TSV (as text or as a grid), Jupyter notebooks, JSON, YAML, TOML, XML, SQLite, and braille files (.brf, .brl, .pef). When QUILL takes the text out of a complicated file, it tells you how well that went. Open from URL brings a web page straight into a tab.

Save As really converts. Choose Word, and your headings become Word headings, each line becomes a paragraph, and your fonts, colors and alignment come along. Choose HTML, and you get a complete web page. Then QUILL tells you what happened, for example: "Saved as report.docx, Word format."

Your originals are protected

When you open a PDF, EPUB or spreadsheet, you are editing the text taken out of it, so Ctrl+S never writes over the original. QUILL explains this and takes you to Save As. If you type a name like notes.pdf, QUILL offers its PDF exporter, so you get a file Acrobat can open.

Choose your converter

You can choose which engine reads and saves Word files: native, MarkItDown or Pandoc. QUILL explains the differences in plain words before you choose.

You open a PDF and find it is just a photo of a page. QUILL can help. It tries free tools on your own computer first, and nothing is uploaded unless you say yes.

How it works

Ordinary files are read straight away. If a PDF looks scanned, QUILL tells you and asks before running free OCR on your computer. That uses Tesseract, a one-time 48 MB download that then works offline. If that is not good enough, for example with dense tables, forms or handwriting, QUILL can offer a cloud service that uses your own key. It asks you every time before a file is sent, and warns you if the file name looks private.

Review exactly what needs reviewing

Review Last OCR Result lists only the lines QUILL was unsure about, as "Page N: confidence, text", so you know exactly what to check. A services page explains each converter: what it does, what it costs, and what stays on your computer.

QUILL translates and embosses braille with liblouis. The braille pack is a small download. BRF files are kept exactly as they are. The Braille Repair tools check line and page lengths against your embosser, jump to the longest line or page, and remove spaces at the ends of lines, so you can proofread before you emboss.

DAISY talking books

One export makes a DAISY 2.02 talking book that a Victor Reader Stream, Plextalk or APH player can read aloud in its own voice. Your headings become the places you can jump to.

Convert a single file through Pandoc to Word, ODT, EPUB, LaTeX, PDF and more, and choose the engine for each conversion. Pandoc downloads the first time you need it (about 45 MB, checked before it is installed).

The batch wizard

The batch wizard converts whole folders in the background. Pick a profile, such as Clean Word Document, Accessible HTML Page, EPUB Book, Print PDF, or Plain Text for Screen Readers. The Status Page shows each file as it goes, and when it is done you hear one line, such as "12 of 14 files converted in 4.2 seconds."

Open and save files over FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, S3 and HTTPS. All of these are off until you turn them on. Edit a file on a server over SSH, and it goes back up when you save, with a backup copy. A GitHub browser opens files from your repositories and saves your changes back. If a remote file cannot be saved back, QUILL says so and offers Save a Copy.

EPUB books open with chapter navigation, for comfortable long reading. List Studio builds and reorders lists by ear. Encoding tools fix files that arrive garbled. You can post to Mastodon, with a spelling check first if you want one. You can also look through your WordPress site with an experimental read-only connection. Sending to WordPress is not available yet.

The voice lists are not just English. The Windows engine lists every voice on your PC, in any language, so if you add Italian or German in Windows Settings, it shows up in QUILL. The Kokoro voices run on your computer and speak English, Spanish, French, Hindi, Italian and Brazilian Portuguese. Piper adds more voices, including Italian's Paola and Riccardo. eSpeak NG covers many languages offline, and the classic DECtalk is a download away. Read Aloud and audiobook export use the language of the voice you choose.

Cloud voices, if you want them

You can add cloud voices from OpenAI, Gemini or ElevenLabs with your own key. Each sentence is kept after the first time, so you are not charged twice for it. An experimental option uses Edge's Online Natural voices, and the setting tells you what that means for your privacy.

Control QUILL by speaking, all on your computer. There are four ways. Hold a key and say one command, such as "save file", "word count" or "next heading". Talk back and forth, and QUILL keeps listening for your next request. Turn on the "Hey QUILL" wake word; the status bar shows it is on, and QUILL reminds you now and then that the microphone is listening. Or ask Ask Quill a question out loud, and press Send yourself.

What voice cannot do

Voice can only run commands that cannot lose your work. It cannot close without saving, send, publish or delete. Everything is off until you turn it on, it is off in Safe Mode, and saying "cancel" stops it.

Nine sound cues

Each step has its own short sound: a chime when voice control turns on, two soft notes when the microphone opens, and so on. You can change them with any sound pack. Prompts can use your name ("Listening, Jeff."), and they stay quiet while your screen reader is talking.

Press Ctrl+F11, talk, and pause. Live Dictation writes each phrase when you pause, reads it back, and understands spoken punctuation and commands. It has two speech engines, Moonshine and Whisper, and both are inside the program, so nothing is downloaded and nothing you say leaves the computer. Locked Dictation (Ctrl+F9) records a whole passage and writes it out afterwards. QUILL can also transcribe recordings, with captions and speaker names. The dictation guide covers all of it.

Recorded a meeting or an interview? QUILL can turn it into a document in a couple of key presses. Transcribe the audio or video, then choose a Transcript Action, such as Meeting Minutes, Action Items, a Summary, Study Notes, Q&A, a Follow-Up Email, Key Quotes or a clean draft. You can make your own actions with the Action Builder, or have a watch folder do it as recordings arrive.

One step-by-step wizard does three jobs. It can read documents aloud into a chaptered M4B or MP3 audiobook, with a different voice for certain chapters if you like, and the loudness ACX asks for. It can join a folder of recordings into one book, one chapter per file, and you check the order before it starts. And it can open any audiobook in the Chapter Workbench, where you fix chapters by ear: play to where a chapter should begin, and split it there.

Change one chapter, rebuild one chapter

If you edit one chapter of a long book, only that chapter is made again. The rest are reused. Propose AI titles can suggest a short title for each track, and you review them before anything changes. One lookup can fill in the title, author, genre, year and cover from Open Library.

Publish without leaving

You can write a podcast feed, upload over SFTP, or send the book to your own Auphonic account. QUILL asks before anything goes online, and your passwords are kept in the Windows Credential Manager.

Speech and AI models load when you need them and unload when you are done. On a computer with little memory, QUILL keeps one model loaded at a time, and it tells you once that it is doing this. Dictation, reading aloud and AI all still work on an older laptop. They just take a moment longer to load.

A vault is a folder of plain-text notes that link to each other. Type [[Note Title]] anywhere, and Follow Wikilink opens that note. Use [[Note#Heading]] to go to a heading, or [[Note#^block]] to go to a block. If the note does not exist yet, QUILL offers to create it. If the name matches more than one note, you choose from a list.

What links here

Show Backlinks lists every note that links to the one you are in, such as "5 notes link here". Each one is read with the sentence the link is in, and Enter opens that note at that spot.

Embeds

Write ![[Other Note]] to point to another note. Speak Embed reads that note without changing your text. Resolve Embed Inline puts the real text in its place, and one Undo takes it back out.

Go to Note narrows a list of notes as you type, and tells you how many match. Search Vault looks through every note, with Regex and Whole Word if you need them, and opens a result at the right line. Show Tags gathers notes by #tag, and #area also finds everything under #area/sub.

Templates and daily notes

Insert Template fills in {{date}}, {{time}} and {{title}}, asks any {{prompt}} questions out loud one at a time, and leaves your cursor at {{cursor}}. Open Today's Note starts today's page or takes you back to it, and Previous and Next Daily Note move through your journal.

Publish and sync

Export Vault as Website makes one accessible web page per note, with the links working. If the vault is a Git repository, Sync Vault sends and receives your changes, and lists any conflicts instead of writing over your words. A vault is plain Markdown, and it is yours to keep.

Tools > Story Studio opens a binder for a book project that you move through with the keyboard. Your parts, chapters and scenes come straight from the Markdown headings you already write. Next to them are groups for Characters, Places, Plot threads, Research and Brainstorm. Press Enter on any item to open it.

Character sheets without a database

Edit Details opens a small form for a character's Role, Goal, Motivation and Arc, or a plot thread's Status, plus tags. It is saved inside the file itself, so the form and the file always agree.

Compile and ship

Compile Manuscript joins every file, in order, into one document. Then use Export as usual for Word, EPUB, DAISY or audio. A project is a folder of plain text plus one small extra file. Delete that file and you still have every word.

GLOW checks your document for accessibility problems and helps you fix them. Check the whole document or just the paragraph you are in. Each problem is explained in plain words, such as a heading level that skips, a link that just says "click here", a picture with no description, or a table with no headers.

Fix without fear

Before anything changes, GLOW shows you the fixed version beside the original. GLOW can also check and fix whole Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF and EPUB files, with a scored report. Fixing always saves a new copy and leaves your original alone.

Private by default

Everyday checks run on your computer. Anything that would go online asks you first, and GLOW updates only when you ask.

A short wizard asks one question: use a model on your own computer, use an account, or not now. Then it connects and tests the connection for you. If you choose an AI command before setting up, QUILL offers the wizard right there.

You never have to pay

The wizard starts with the free choices. For the most privacy, run a model on your own computer: no account, it works offline, and nothing leaves your device. For the best answers, get a free OpenRouter key, and the wizard picks a good free model for you. Every provider has a Get API Key button that opens the right sign-up page, and free models say "Free". Free online models can be slower, and private writing is best kept on your own computer.

Ask Quill is a conversation that knows your document. Ask it to draft, rewrite, summarize, rearrange, or answer questions. Every change it suggests is shown to you first. You accept or reject it, and one Undo takes it back. Nothing is ever changed behind your back.

The everyday actions

Rewrite, summarize, expand, continue, fix grammar, and make a table of contents. AI spell check and a grammar and style review. Translate a selection or a whole document. An AI thesaurus, questions and answers about your document, and answers read aloud in natural voices.

QUILL's agent works with whichever AI you connected: a model on your computer, OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, OpenRouter or others. If you pay for GitHub Copilot, you can use that. You sign in with a short code that QUILL reads to you, and no API key is needed. The Claude Agent and OpenAI Agents engines use API keys you already have.

The safety never changes

Whichever engine you use, the agent only suggests. You see a preview and approve it, and one key press undoes it. Agents from other companies work with text only, and cannot touch your files or run programs. It is all off until you turn it on, and off in Safe Mode.

The AI Library keeps your Prompts, Skills and Agents in one place. A prompt you use often can grow into a Skill with several steps, and a Skill can grow into an Agent. They all use the connection you set up once, and you can share skill packs on the Quillin Hub.

If your computer can run a better model, QUILL tells you, and you can ignore it. If you are offline and you have a model on your computer, QUILL tells you that you can switch to it, but it never switches for you. Your privacy choice stays yours. Models you are not using unload to free up memory.

A small JSON file can add menu items, keys and snippets, with placeholders such as ${selection}, ${date} and ${clipboard}. You do not need any code or tools. The Snippet Wizard builds that file for you in your browser: fill in the form, download the file, and you are done.

Need more? Add Python or Node.js code. It runs on its own, apart from QUILL, and can only use what it asked for. Your document, your files, the network, the clipboard and storage each need your permission. A Quillin speaks through QUILL's own announcements, so it works with your screen reader. If a Quillin crashes, your editor and your document are fine.

Deep integration

Quillins can add to any menu and to the context menu, use their own keys (QUILL tells you about any clash), add abbreviations, add smart triggers like =bug(), and respond to things that happen in a document. The Quillins Manager shows what each one can do, and lets you turn it on or off, reload it, or remove it.

The Quillin Hub is where people share Quillins, AI agents, skill packs, sound packs, keyboard packs, verbosity packs and pronunciation dictionaries. Before you submit something, QUILL checks it on your own computer and reads you the result. Everything on the Hub is signed, and both the Hub and your Quillins Manager tell you whether the signature checks out.

A Developer Console lets you script QUILL from inside QUILL. A sandboxed Python runner handles quick changes to text. Source code gets spell check and word movement that understand code. Lint tools check your Quillin before you share it, and the GitHub browser lets you work on a repository without leaving QUILL.

Undo keeps up to a hundred steps, even after you close the file. Autosave and backups protect every save, and after a crash QUILL offers to bring your work back. Every save also keeps a snapshot. File > Restore Previous Version lists them, such as "Today at 4:12 PM, 2,341 words". Before you restore one, QUILL keeps a snapshot of what you have now, so you can change your mind. A week of saves is kept in full, then one a day, then one a week, and the newest five are always kept.

Safe saving

Settings and data are written to a temporary file first and then swapped in. If the computer crashes in the middle, your existing file is untouched.

Updates are checked against a signed list, downloads are checked before they install, and optional parts install only when you ask. You hear the progress, and you can cancel.

The advisory system

If people report that a feature is causing real trouble, we can send a signed notice that turns just that feature off until a fix is ready. QUILL tells you when this happens and why. A notice can only turn things off, never on. If you need the feature anyway, setting QUILL_IGNORE_FEATURE_LOCKS=1 overrides it. We only do this after real reports from the community, when a fix cannot come fast enough.

Passwords and keys are kept in your system's secure credential store, never in plain files. Sensitive settings are encrypted. Crash reports have passwords and personal details removed before they go anywhere, and QUILL tells you whether a report was sent. Every place in QUILL that can go online is listed and checked each time the code changes.

More than 7,000 automatic tests run every time the code changes. Every night a test robot opens the real app on a real desktop, presses real keys, and checks what a screen reader would find. It reports to people. It does not change anything by itself.

0.9.0 is the last beta with new features. Between now and 1.0, the work is fixing bugs, smoothing rough edges and making things faster, guided by what you report. If something is not fixed yet, we will tell you so. And when a fix comes from your report, your name goes on it.