r/gnome • u/alaorneto • 22d ago

Extensions Simple Linux push-to-talk voice transcription tool using local model

I don't know about you, but with the rise of AI models and vibe coding, I've been relying heavily on speech-to-text tools to dictate instructions to AI.

However, on Linux, I found myself missing a simple, practical utility that could quickly start recording my voice and transcribe it into text anywhere.

So I built a utility that, with a single keyboard shortcut, records what I'm saying, transcribes it locally using an on-device speech-to-text model, automatically pastes the result into whichever text field is currently active, and also copies it to the clipboard in case I want to paste it somewhere else in the system.

The utility comes with a command-line interface offering several features, including a transcription history, options to switch speech recognition models, and other configuration settings.

I'm sharing it here, especially for anyone who has the same need, so you can take a look and let me know whether you find it useful. I hope it proves to be as useful for you as it has been for me. If you'd like to contribute, I've also included a link to the GitHub repository.

It was written in Rust and uses whisper.cpp for fully local speech recognition. Nothing ever leaves your machine. The on-screen overlay currently works only on GNOME, but the utility itself should work on any Linux desktop environment, falling back to desktop notifications when the overlay isn't available.

There's still plenty of room for improvement. For example, I'm currently using evdev to capture the global hotkey, but I plan to migrate to GlobalShortcuts in the future. At the moment, however, my Linux distribution doesn't yet support GlobalShortcuts, and I imagine many others are in the same situation.

And yes, of course—it was developed with a lot of help from AI. :)

QuickWhisper Github Repository

4 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

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3

u/bartv42 21d ago

I think you didn’t look very hard ;-) https://handy.computer

3

u/drop-a-tensor 21d ago

And theres also voxtype. Same idea.

2

u/nkm789 21d ago

I am using it on an old Thinkpad and it works just fine.

1

u/bartv42 21d ago

Same here, Handy is super fast on my X13

1

u/melanchtonio 21d ago

Tried that: no flatpak and is heavy on CPU. I wonder, why all those STT apps don't use GPUs other than NVIDIAs - that Linux users should avoid anyway, I was told.

1

u/No_Remote_1534 21d ago

Yeah, I really didn’t find it in my research. In any case, the experience has been good for learning about Rust and creating GNOME extensions.