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Installation & Setup

System Requirements

Linux

  • OS: Any modern Linux distro (Ubuntu 20.04+, Fedora 36+, Arch, etc.)
  • Display: X11 or Wayland
  • Audio: PulseAudio or PipeWire (ALSA fallback supported)
  • Required packages: libwebkit2gtk-4.1, libayatana-appindicator3 or libappindicator3
  • Optional: wtype (Wayland injection), xdotool (X11 injection)
  • For Kokoro TTS: espeak-ng (phonemisation), ONNX Runtime (inference — see Kokoro TTS below)

Windows

  • OS: Windows 10 (1903+) or Windows 11
  • Runtime: WebView2 (pre-installed on Win11; auto-downloadable on Win10)

Installing the AppImage (Linux)

The recommended distribution format is an AppImage — a single portable executable with all dependencies bundled.

# Download the latest AppImage
curl -LO https://github.com/jrufer/voxctrl/releases/latest/download/VoxCtrl.AppImage

# Make executable
chmod +x VoxCtrl.AppImage

# Run
./VoxCtrl.AppImage

Or use the install script for system integration (desktop entry, udev rules):

bash install.sh

The install script:

  1. Copies the AppImage to ~/.local/bin/voxctrl
  2. Installs a .desktop file for application launchers
  3. Creates udev rules for /dev/input access (required for global hotkeys)
  4. Adds the current user to the input group

Note: After running install.sh, you must log out and back in for the input group membership to take effect. Until then, global hotkeys will not work.

Robust Container / Sandbox Support: VoxCtrl employs intelligent diagnostic checks that support legacy rule files (99-voxctrl.rules, 99-voxctl.rules, or 99-voxctr.rules) and dynamically fallback to checking the system's NSS group database (/etc/group) if the current container process session fails to refresh its active group token, ensuring that the warning screen does not show up repeatedly on every launch.

Permissions Setup (Linux)

Global Hotkeys

VoxCtrl uses evdev to listen for global keyboard events. Your user must be in the input group:

sudo usermod -aG input $USER
# Log out and back in

Verify:

groups $USER | grep input

Wayland Text Injection

For Wayland sessions, install wtype:

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install wtype

# Arch
sudo pacman -S wtype

# Fedora
sudo dnf install wtype

X11 Text Injection

For X11 sessions, install xdotool:

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install xdotool

# Arch
sudo pacman -S xdotool

First Run

On first launch, VoxCtrl will:

  1. Create ~/.config/voxctrl/ with default config.json, targets.toml, and bindings.toml
  2. Create ~/.local/share/voxctrl/ for model and voice storage
  3. Open the Settings window

Download a Whisper Model

Before you can dictate, you need a speech recognition model:

  1. Go to Settings → Engine
  2. Choose a model size (recommendation: small for a good speed/accuracy balance; the default is large-v3 for maximum accuracy)
  3. Click "Download" and wait for completion (~142 MB for base, ~466 MB for small, ~3 GB for large-v3)

Configure a Hotkey

A default binding (Super + Space, hold gesture → inject to focused window) is created automatically. Verify it in Settings → Hotkeys, or change the key combo if it conflicts with your desktop environment.

Test Dictation

  1. Open any text editor
  2. Click into the text area
  3. Hold Super + Space and speak
  4. Release to transcribe

Optional Setup

GPU Acceleration

Vulkan (AMD / Intel / NVIDIA): Set engine.whisper_cpp.device = "vulkan" in config, or choose "Vulkan" in Settings → Engine. Install driver support if needed:

# Ubuntu
sudo apt install vulkan-tools libvulkan1

# Arch
sudo pacman -S vulkan-icd-loader

NVIDIA CUDA: CUDA acceleration requires a CUDA-enabled build of VoxCtrl — it is not available in the standard pre-built AppImage. You must compile from source with:

npm run tauri build -- --features cuda

Once running a CUDA build, set engine.whisper_cpp.device = "auto" (or "cuda") and VoxCtrl will use the GPU automatically. The "CUDA (NVIDIA)" option in Settings → Engine is only shown when the binary was compiled with CUDA support.

Ollama Post-Processing

If you want LLM grammar correction:

  1. Install Ollama
  2. Pull a model: ollama pull llama3.2
  3. Enable in Settings → Ollama

Kokoro TTS

The Kokoro neural TTS engine requires two system components. install.sh handles both automatically; for manual setup:

1. espeak-ng (phonemisation):

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install espeak-ng

# Arch
sudo pacman -S espeak-ng

# Fedora
sudo dnf install espeak-ng

# openSUSE
sudo zypper install espeak-ng

2. ONNX Runtime (model inference):

# Arch (via AUR)
yay -S onnxruntime

# All other distros
pip install onnxruntime

Note: VoxCtrl auto-discovers the ONNX Runtime library at launch — it searches common system paths and queries python3 for the location of any installed onnxruntime package (including pip --user installs). If auto-discovery fails, set ORT_DYLIB_PATH=/path/to/libonnxruntime.so in your environment before launching VoxCtrl.

Once both prerequisites are installed, download the Kokoro model from Settings → TTS → Kokoro. The fp16 quality preset (169 MB) is recommended for most systems.

MCP Server (Claude Desktop / Cursor)

  1. Enable in Settings → Engine → MCP Server
  2. Configure your MCP client to connect to /tmp/voxctrl-mcp.sock

Building from Source

See Development Guide.

Troubleshooting

Hotkeys not working

  • Check you are in the input group: groups | grep input
  • Log out and back in after adding to group
  • On some distros, the udev rule path differs — check install.sh for details

No audio devices found

  • Run arecord -l to verify your mic is recognized by ALSA
  • Check if PulseAudio/PipeWire is running: pactl info
  • Try setting audio.input_device_index manually to a specific device index (integer, not null)

Text not injecting on Wayland

  • Verify wtype is installed: which wtype
  • Some applications block synthetic input (e.g. terminals with certain settings)
  • Clipboard fallback always works — use delivery = "clipboard" as a workaround

Whisper outputs wrong language

  • Set engine.language to your language code (e.g. "de", "fr", "es")
  • Use a larger model for better non-English accuracy

AppImage won't launch

  • Install FUSE: sudo apt install fuse libfuse2
  • Or extract and run directly: ./VoxCtrl.AppImage --appimage-extract && squashfs-root/AppRun

Debugging & Crash Logs

If the application crashes, fails to launch, or encounters hardware/model errors, you can check the local startup and error log file:

  • Location: ~/.local/share/voxctrl/startup_errors.log
  • Privacy: To protect your privacy, this file never records or contains any transcribed speech text or LLM prompts. It only logs system configurations (models loaded, input devices, sample rates) and application/compiler errors.
  • Submitting Reports: Please attach this log file when opening issues or submitting crash reports on GitHub to help us diagnose the problem.

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