Feature request: automatic recording duration limit + ability to cancel an ongoing transcription

[sitexw]

Hi,

First of all, thank you for Handy — I use the project a lot and I think it’s excellent ❤️

I would like to suggest two small improvements that could help prevent some frustrating edge cases.

Context

I use Handy with a “toggle” workflow:

• one shortcut to start recording,
• I speak without holding any key,
• then another shortcut to stop the recording and start transcription.

The issue is that it is possible to forget that a recording is still running.

In my case, this already resulted in a recording that probably lasted at least 15 minutes without me noticing it. Later, when I tried to start a new recording, it actually stopped the previous one and immediately started transcribing it.

Since I use a large Whisper model on GPU (Windows 11), the transcription consumed a lot of resources, and there was no way to cancel it once it started.

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1. Automatic recording duration limit

I think it would be very useful to add a setting allowing users to automatically limit the maximum recording duration.

Example:

• 5 or 10 minutes by default,
• configurable by the user,
• when the limit is reached, Handy automatically stops the recording and starts transcription.

As an extra improvement, a small visual warning or animation shortly before reaching the limit could help notify the user.

I think this feature alone would already prevent most problematic situations.

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2. Ability to cancel an ongoing transcription

It would also be very useful to allow cancelling a transcription while it is actively being generated (audio → text).

The main benefit would be being able to interrupt an abnormally long, stuck, or potentially “infinite” transcription without having to force-close the application through Task Manager.

For example, this could be done via a button inside the small bottom overlay shown during transcription.

To avoid accidental loss of a valid recording, the cancellation could require a simple confirmation:

• first click → confirmation request,
• second click → actual cancellation.

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Minor related UI bug

I also noticed a small UI issue:

if shortcuts are triggered too quickly in sequence (start recording → cancel/stop recording → immediately start another recording), the bottom overlay sometimes disappears.

This bug is not very problematic by itself, but I mention it because it is directly related to the issue described above: since the overlay disappeared, I no longer realized that a recording was still active, which is why I ended up with a 15+ minute recording without noticing it.

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Thanks again for the project.