voculinux/docs/USER_GUIDE.md

User guide

How to use Vocalinux day to day. Install first: INSTALL.md.

Getting started

1. Launch Vocalinux (vocalinux or the application menu)
2. Find the microphone icon in the system tray
3. Start dictation with the tray menu or your keyboard shortcut
4. Speak into the focused application; text is injected when an utterance completes
5. Stop by releasing the key (push-to-talk, default on new installs) or with the same shortcut (toggle)

Start on login

Enable Start on Login from the first-run dialog, tray menu, or Settings. Vocalinux writes an XDG autostart entry (~/.config/autostart/vocalinux.desktop) and starts as a normal user app (--start-minimized). It does not create a systemd service.

Works on common desktop environments (GNOME, KDE, Xfce, Cinnamon, MATE, LXQt). Minimal window-manager sessions may need their own autostart helper.

Status icons

Icon state	Meaning
Gray (off)	Inactive
Blue (on)	Listening
Orange	Processing speech

Dictation formatting

Vocalinux capitalizes the start of dictation and letters after ., !, or ?. Each completed utterance leaves a trailing space so the next session does not glue onto the previous sentence.

Dictating into terminals

When Vocalinux injects through the clipboard (the usual Wayland / ydotool path), it sends Ctrl+V in ordinary text fields and Ctrl+Shift+V in terminal emulator windows. Auto-detect works on X11 and on Hyprland, Sway, and niri. On GNOME or KDE Wayland, set Settings → Dictation → Clipboard Paste Shortcut to Ctrl+Shift+V.

On non-US layouts such as German Neo, that chord uses the key that types v on the active layout (not physical KEY_V). Nested terminal panels inside an IDE are often invisible to window-class detection. If paste lands as a literal ^V or does nothing, open Settings → Dictation → Clipboard Paste Shortcut and choose Ctrl+Shift+V.

Other audio. Settings → Audio → Other audio can lower speakers and headphones while the microphone is open, then put that volume back. It stays off until you turn it on. Level while dictating is a percent of the current volume (0 is silent). Quitting mid-dictation puts the volume back; if the app crashes first, the next launch does.

Shortcuts

Configure under Settings → Shortcuts:

Mode	Behavior
Push-to-talk (default on new installs)	Hold Right Alt (Option on Mac-layout keyboards) while speaking; release to stop
Toggle	Double-tap the configured shortcut key to start/stop

Existing configs keep their saved shortcut. Left/right modifier keys and custom modifier+key combos (for example Alt+R) are supported.

Voice commands

Optional spoken commands for punctuation and editing (can be disabled in Settings). English phrases always work. With a non-English recognition language, matching punctuation and line-break phrases in that language are also recognized (Italian virgola / punto, French virgule / point, and similar).

Command	Action
"new line" / "new paragraph"	Line break
"period" / "full stop" / "dot"	.
"comma"	,
"question mark"	?
"exclamation point" / "exclamation mark"	!
"semicolon"	;
"colon"	:
"delete that" / "scratch that"	Delete last sentence
"capitalize" / "uppercase"	Capitalize next word
"all caps"	Next word in ALL CAPS

Editing and formatting action phrases (delete that, undo, capitalize, and similar) are currently English-only.

Engines and models

Open Settings → Speech Model. The page starts with a simple setup (language and speed/accuracy). Expand Advanced for engine, model size, and specialization. Sidebar search (Ctrl+F) works across pages.

Engines

Engine	Best for	GPU	Footprint
whisper.cpp (default)	Most users	Vulkan (AMD, Intel, NVIDIA)	~74MB default model
Whisper (OpenAI)	PyTorch/CUDA workflows	NVIDIA/CUDA	Large (PyTorch stack)
Faster Whisper	CPU Whisper (CTranslate2 / INT8)	Optional CUDA	Similar model sizes to Whisper
VOSK	Low RAM / older machines	CPU	~40MB
Parakeet	CPU dictation; 25 European languages	CPU	~639MB v3-european
Remote API	Offload to a server	N/A (server-side)	Opt-in; see HTTP_REMOTE.md

Parakeet runs NVIDIA NeMo ASR models through sherpa-onnx. The default bundle is v3-european (25 European languages). v2-english is English-only. Parakeet ignores the catalog language picker (language is treated as auto).

Language

Pick the language you dictate in from Language, or leave it on auto-detect.

If you work in more than one language and switch keyboard layouts to do it, turn on Follow keyboard layout instead. Vocalinux then reads your active layout at the start of every dictation and uses the matching language, so switching layout switches dictation language with it. The Language picker greys out while this is on and shows what your current layout resolves to; turning it off pins that language.

Available for whisper.cpp, Whisper, Faster Whisper, and Remote API. VOSK loads a separate model per language, so following a layout would mean a model reload on the hotkey; Parakeet does not use the language picker at all. Active-layout detection uses GNOME's input-source settings; on other desktops it falls back to the configured primary layout.

Activation via a KDE Plasma global shortcut

Instead of the built-in hotkey listener, you can let your desktop's global shortcut system trigger Vocalinux. On Wayland the built-in listener reads /dev/input (requiring membership in the input group and effectively acting as a system-wide key reader). Delegating activation to the compositor avoids this entirely: no /dev/input access and no input group needed just to start/stop dictation. Text injection is unaffected.

Enable it in Vocalinux:

1. Open Settings → Shortcuts (the Keyboard Shortcuts group on the Dictation page)
2. Turn on External Activation (Desktop Shortcut)

The change applies immediately; you do not need to restart. The built-in key listener stops, and a running instance exposes a D-Bus service on the session bus (com.vocalinux.Vocalinux). The CLI can forward commands to it:

vocalinux --toggle   # start if idle, stop if active
vocalinux --start    # start voice typing
vocalinux --stop     # stop voice typing

Then bind a compositor shortcut to vocalinux --toggle. On KDE Plasma:

1. Open System Settings -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Add New -> Command or Script (older Plasma: System Settings -> Shortcuts -> Custom Shortcuts -> Edit -> New -> Global Shortcut -> Command/URL).

2. Bind a key combination of your choice to the command vocalinux --toggle.

Now your chosen key combination toggles dictation, handled by the compositor rather than by Vocalinux reading the keyboard directly. This works the same way on other compositors that support binding a key to a command (e.g. GNOME custom shortcuts, Sway/Hyprland bindsym/bind).

As an advanced alternative, you can set the same option in ~/.config/vocalinux/config.json under shortcuts:

"shortcuts": {
    "disable_internal_hotkey": true
}

Quit Vocalinux before editing that file so the running app cannot overwrite the edit from its cached config. Start Vocalinux again after saving.

Model size (whisper.cpp / Whisper)

Size	Approx. size	Tradeoff
tiny	~74MB	Fastest; real-time friendly
base	~141MB	Balance of speed and accuracy
small	~465MB	Better accuracy
medium	~1.5GB	High accuracy
large	~3.0GB	Best accuracy; heavier

For whisper.cpp, also pick a Specialization: standard multilingual, English-only, quantized (lower memory), Turbo, or legacy large. English-only specializations limit the language selector to English. Exact IDs (for example medium.en-q5_0, large-v3-turbo) work with --model.

Removing unused models

If leftover files are on disk that are not the model currently selected, Unused downloads appears under the model info card. Expand it to delete leftovers one at a time. Confirming removes those files from ~/.local/share/vocalinux. Packaged system-wide VOSK models are left alone.

GPU

whisper.cpp prefers Vulkan when the bundled pywhispercpp libraries include it, then CUDA, then CPU. Host tools such as vulkaninfo only describe the machine. The engine follows the libraries actually loaded. On multi-GPU machines a discrete Vulkan device is preferred; override under Settings → Performance → Vulkan GPU. Check logs with vocalinux --debug.

Pip wheels of pywhispercpp are often CUDA builds. In that case Vocalinux uses CUDA device 0. install.sh rebuilds pywhispercpp with Vulkan or CUDA when it can.

Auto-pause and keep-alive

Under Settings:

• Auto-pause apps: unload the model while listed apps run
• Model keep-alive: unload after idle timeout to free GPU/CPU

In Settings → Performance → Unload When Idle, enable Record while model reloads to speak as soon as you press the dictation shortcut. Audio stays in memory while the model loads, then joins the rest of the recording for transcription. Releasing the shortcut before loading finishes still submits the recorded speech. Wait for that transcription to finish before starting another recording. This option is off by default.

Tips for better recognition

1. Use a decent microphone and reduce background noise when you can
2. Speak clearly at a natural pace
3. Prefer tiny/base for snappy dictation; larger models when accuracy matters more than latency
4. English-only or quantized specializations help when they match your use case
5. Confirm Vulkan/CUDA in debug logs if transcription is slower than expected

CLI

vocalinux --help
vocalinux --version
vocalinux --debug
vocalinux --engine whisper_cpp
vocalinux --engine faster_whisper
vocalinux --engine parakeet
vocalinux --model medium.en-q5_0
vocalinux --wayland
vocalinux --start-minimized
vocalinux --transcribe-file meeting.wav   # diarized transcript on stdout, then exits

Custom Dictionary Support

Open Settings → Custom Dictionary to configure two separate capabilities:

• Custom terms bias recognition toward product names, people, and jargon. They are read from ~/.config/vocalinux/dictionary.txt by default, as UTF-8 with one term per line. Blank lines and # comments are allowed, so the same file remains friendly to an accessibility scanner. Use the add/remove editor or choose a different readable terms file with the file picker.
• Transcript corrections replace a known misheard word or phrase after transcription, for example super base with Supabase. Corrections are stored separately in ~/.config/vocalinux/custom-dictionary-corrections.json.

VocaLinux re-reads both files before each completed dictation segment, so an external edit applies to the next segment without restarting the app. Vocabulary bias works with Whisper, whisper.cpp, and Faster Whisper. Corrections work with every engine, including VOSK, Parakeet, and the configured remote API.

Corrections run before voice-command interpretation. This can prevent a command-like misrecognition from acting, but avoid replacements that create a voice command unless that is intentional. Correction replacements are not automatically added to recognition bias.

For a one-session terms override, start Vocalinux with:

vocalinux --dictionary-file /path/to/dictionary.txt

This temporarily enables terms from that file without changing saved settings; the Custom terms controls are disabled for the session. It does not disable transcript corrections.

--transcribe-file uses the TinyDiarize model (small.en-tdrz) and needs it downloaded first — the tray "Transcribe Audio File…" entry fetches it on demand.

Troubleshooting

vocalinux --debug

See TROUBLESHOOTING.md for tray, audio, injection, and model issues. Distro notes: DISTRO_COMPATIBILITY.md. Updates: UPDATE.md. Help channels: SUPPORT.md.

Text injection backend

Vocalinux types your dictated text using one of several backends. It picks one automatically, and on most desktops the automatic choice is correct.

Autodetection can be wrong, though, and it fails in a way that is easy to misread: on a compositor that does not relay IBus commits to native Wayland applications, IBus reports the text as delivered while nothing appears. If dictation works in some windows (typically XWayland ones, like a browser) but silently does nothing in others, that is the symptom.

Pin the backend explicitly in ~/.config/vocalinux/config.json:

{
  "text_injection": {
    "backend": "wtype"
  }
}

Value	Backend
auto	Autodetect (default; autodetection may select IBus)
ibus	IBus input method; on Wayland, bypasses compositor checks and may silently do nothing in native Wayland apps
portal	RemoteDesktop portal (Wayland; the sandboxed path, asks for permission once, works under Flatpak)
wtype	wtype virtual keyboard (Wayland)
ydotool	ydotool uinput (Wayland; needs ydotoold)
xdotool	xdotool (X11). On Wayland it only turns IBus off -- the Wayland tool is still picked automatically

The setting takes effect on the next start. auto leaves normal autodetection in place and may select IBus. An explicit non-IBus pin (portal, wtype, ydotool, or xdotool) skips IBus selection.

On Wayland, when IBus is not selected, autodetection tries the RemoteDesktop portal first -- it is the only injection path Wayland officially supports and it needs no uinput device or helper daemon -- then ydotool, wtype, and finally xdotool under XWayland.

On X11 the injection tool is xdotool regardless of which non-ibus value you pin, so xdotool is the name to use there when IBus is unreliable in a particular application. Pinning ibus keeps the IBus path; pinning anything else turns it off.

To try a backend for a single run without changing the saved setting, set VOCALINUX_FORCE_BACKEND, which overrides the config value. Set it to auto to ignore a saved pin for that run:

VOCALINUX_FORCE_BACKEND=wtype vocalinux --debug

The setting and environment override are read at startup, so restart Vocalinux after editing config.json. The startup log first records a backend pin request; it does not prove the backend was available or that text reached the focused application. Later logs identify a fallback when a pin was not applied.

If a pinned tool is unavailable, Vocalinux warns and continues with its normal fallback selection. portal needs a desktop implementing the org.freedesktop.portal.RemoteDesktop interface (GNOME and KDE Plasma do; most wlroots compositors do not). ydotool also needs a usable /dev/uinput and a working ydotoold setup. xdotool types into X11/XWayland windows, not native Wayland windows. A live test in the target application is still the final confirmation that text is delivered.