Troubleshooting

Silk won’t talk to me / doesn’t respond to my voice

This is the most common problem, and it usually comes down to one of a few things. Work through them in order.

1. Press the hotkey twice: once to start, once to send. Push-to-talk is a toggle, not hold-to-talk:

Press Ctrl+Space once (don’t hold it).
Speak.
Press Ctrl+Space again. Silk only sends your request after this second press.

Holding the keys down, or pressing once and waiting, leaves Silk listening forever with nothing sent.

2. Check whether Silk heard you. After you speak, does the text of what you said appear in the panel?

No text appears: Silk isn’t hearing you. Open the panel’s Audio settings, choose the right microphone (the default is often a webcam or a Bluetooth headset in another room), and run the mic test: the level bars should move when you speak. If they don’t, pick another mic and test again. If your request only ever shows up as “you” or nothing at all, it’s the wrong mic.
Your words appear but you hear nothing: go to step 3.

3. Check that speaking is on and you can hear it.

In Settings → Audio, make sure Speaking is set to On.
Check your computer’s volume, the output device (speakers vs. headphones), and that Do Not Disturb or Focus mode isn’t muting it. Play any video to confirm sound works.
Even with no sound, Silk’s reply still appears as text in the panel.

4. Check permissions. Click the shield icon at the top of the panel. If Microphone shows a red status, grant it again. See Permissions Setup.

5. Try a different network. Silk’s voice features need the internet. If everything above looks right, connect your computer to your phone’s hotspot and try again. If it works there, your Wi-Fi, VPN, firewall or security software is blocking Silk.

On Windows, `Ctrl+Space` beeps and flickers on and off

That’s Windows using Ctrl+Space to switch keyboard languages. Change Silk’s hotkey to Alt+Space or Ctrl+Shift+Space. See the fix on the Push-to-Talk page.

OpenRouter API key problems

I can’t paste my key

Click the Paste button next to the API key field, or right-click inside the field and choose Paste. If you don’t see a Paste button, update Silk first.

Silk says my key is invalid, but it works elsewhere

The key almost always has an invisible space or line break stuck to it. In OpenRouter, copy the key again using its copy button (don’t select the text by hand), then paste it into Silk with nothing before or after it, and click Save. If it still fails, create a new key in OpenRouter and use that.

”Insufficient credits”

Your OpenRouter balance has run out. Add credits at openrouter.ai/credits. If you set a monthly credit limit on the key, you may have reached it; raise the limit or wait for it to reset.

Claude or ChatGPT plan problems

If you power Silk with a subscription instead of a key, sign-in problems, usage limits and expired sign-ins are covered on their own pages:

”API error: fetch failed” or other network errors

This means Silk’s request to the AI never reached OpenRouter. It’s a network problem, not your key, your credits or your task: it fails the same way on simple and complex requests. Silk has no email or account connections to reset, so there’s nothing to fix in its settings.

Update Silk. Newer versions automatically retry when a connection drops for a moment, which clears most cases. See Updating Silk.
Mac users: turn off iCloud Private Relay (System Settings → your Apple Account → iCloud → Private Relay) and try again. It’s the most common cause on Macs.
Pause your VPN, firewall or security software (for example Little Snitch, Norton or McAfee) and try again.
Try your phone’s hotspot. If Silk works on the hotspot but not on your usual Wi-Fi, that network is blocking the connection.

Updating Silk

Silk checks for updates when it starts and every few hours after that, and downloads them in the background. An update is only installed when Silk restarts, and Silk never restarts on its own, so nothing changes while you’re in the middle of something.

When an update is ready, you’ll see:

A banner at the top of the panel: “Version x.y.z is ready · Restart”. Click Restart.
A dot on the Silk menu-bar icon, with Restart to update at the top of its menu.
A notification, at most once a day, if you haven’t restarted for a while.

Restarting takes a few seconds and Silk comes back on its own. Nothing is lost: your skills, memory, schedules, license and API key are all kept.

Not sure if you’re up to date? Open the panel and look at the button in the bottom bar:

It says	What to do
Restart to update	The update is downloaded and waiting: click it.
Check for updates	Click it. If nothing is found, you’re up to date, or the download hasn’t finished yet: leave Silk running for a few minutes and check again.
Check failed	Silk couldn’t reach the update server. Try another network (see network errors).

You can also always download the latest version from download.heysilkai.com and install it over the old one.

I can’t find the Silk icon

Silk is still running; its icon is just hidden. A full macOS menu bar (especially on MacBooks with a notch) or a menu-bar manager like Bartender can hide it, and Windows tucks tray icons behind the ^ arrow.

Press the panel shortcut: ⌃⇧Space (Control+Shift+Space) on Mac or Ctrl+Shift+Space on Windows opens Silk from anywhere.
Give Silk its own window: in Settings → Window, turn on Detached window. Silk gets a normal Dock or taskbar icon and stops depending on the menu bar.
On a Mac, hold ⌘ and drag menu-bar icons to rearrange them, or quit a few other menu-bar apps to make room.

Silk can’t see my screen

On macOS, Silk needs Screen Recording permission. Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Recording and turn on Silk, then quit and reopen Silk: macOS only applies the permission after a restart.

If Silk answers without mentioning what’s on your screen, this is almost always the cause.

The cursor overlay

It doesn’t appear: confirm Screen Recording is granted on macOS, try in a normal (not full-screen) window, and restart Silk if it was working before. Check it isn’t switched off: the bottom of the panel should say Hide Overlay, not Show Overlay.

It seems to block my clicks: update Silk; this was fixed in an earlier version. If it happens anyway, press Escape to stop any running task, then quit and reopen Silk.

To hide the overlay, use Hide Overlay at the bottom of the panel. Escape stops tasks; it doesn’t hide the overlay.

Act Mode isn’t working / stops unexpectedly

Act Mode controls your mouse and keyboard in real time. It stops on purpose if you move the mouse yourself or press Escape. Other reasons it may stop:

A CAPTCHA or two-factor prompt appeared: Silk pauses and asks you to complete it.
The page layout changed since Silk last looked at it.
Stop it from the panel and try again with a more specific request.

Background agents

Where’s the “create agent” button? There isn’t one: you start an agent by asking. Say or type something like “Start a background agent to research our three biggest competitors and write a summary.” It appears in the Agent Dock. See Background Agents.

An agent isn’t running or produced nothing:

Check the Agent Dock: the agent may have hit an error. Expand it to see its last output.
Very long tasks can time out. Break them into smaller steps.
If it needs to save files, check the destination folder exists. You can choose where agents save their work in Settings → Background task folder.

Silk is slow, or using a lot of credits

Check your model first. The default, deepseek/deepseek-v4.1-flash, is the fastest accurate model in our benchmark at about a cent per task. Older or heavier models can be several times slower and pricier.
Start fresh. Long conversations make every request bigger. Click Clear context in the panel when you change topic.
Watch your spend: Settings shows today’s API spend for your key.

”Application error: a client-side exception has occurred”

This message comes from a website Silk was browsing, not from Silk itself: that site hit an error in your browser. Reload the page or try again later. If it keeps happening on one site, the problem is on that site’s end.

Several apps stopped working at once (Windows)

If Silk’s microphone or audio breaks at the same time as other apps (Discord, other AI or voice apps), or your monitor briefly goes black, the cause is usually a graphics driver, not Silk. Update your graphics driver (Intel Arc systems in particular) and chipset drivers from your PC maker or Intel, then restart.

Windows shows a SmartScreen warning when installing

Silk’s Windows installer is signed, but Windows can still show a SmartScreen prompt for newer software. Click More info → Run anyway. It isn’t a sign of a problem, and the warning fades as more people install Silk.

Activation and license problems

Sign-in email not arriving, “all seats in use”, or new features missing after an upgrade: see Activation & License.

MCP server won’t connect

Check that the server command is correct and that anything it needs is installed.
Check that any API keys or environment variables the server requires are set in its config.
See MCP Servers for setup steps, and don’t switch on every tool a server offers: fewer tools work better.

Still stuck?

Ask Silk first, or use the Ask Silk button at the bottom-right of any page. It answers instantly from these docs.
If that doesn’t solve it, talk to a human. The Silk team replies by email, usually within one business day.
As a last resort, email support@heysilkai.com.

When you get in touch, say which computer you use (Mac or Windows), your Silk version, and what you’ve tried. If an Act Mode task went wrong, Copy agent logs in the Silk panel copies a step-by-step record of that task to paste into your message. It includes what Silk saw on screen, so read it first and remove anything private. Never include your OpenRouter API key.

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