[BUG] Long sequence transcription fails

[ssrihari]

[BUG] Long sequence transcription fails

Sometimes when I record long sequences, when I dictate for a long period of time, much of what I say is lost. Sometimes only the beginning and end are preserved and sometimes it just fails and nothing is transcribed. By long here, what I mean is something over a minute or two.

I'm sharing one of the instances here where the transcription failed quite badly. It took about a minute of recording and just gave me the same one sentence over and over again.

I'm using Moonshine base, I don't know if it's a model issue, but dropping entire recordings happens too, and that doesn't feel like model issue to me.

System Information

App Version:

v0.8.2

Operating System:

macOS Version 15.5 (24F74)

CPU:

Apple M2 Pro

GPU:

Apple M2 GPU

Logs

[2026-04-14][15:38:54][handy_app_lib::shortcut::handy_keys][DEBUG] handy-keys event: binding=transcribe, hotkey=option+space, state=Pressed
[2026-04-14][15:38:54][handy_app_lib::actions][DEBUG] TranscribeAction::start called for binding: transcribe
[2026-04-14][15:38:54][enigo::platform::macos_impl][DEBUG] �[93mlocation()�[0m
[2026-04-14][15:38:54][handy_app_lib::actions][DEBUG] Microphone mode - always_on: false
[2026-04-14][15:38:54][handy_app_lib::actions][DEBUG] On-demand mode: Starting recording first, then audio feedback
[2026-04-14][15:38:54][handy_app_lib::shortcut::handy_keys][DEBUG] handy-keys event: binding=transcribe, hotkey=option+space, state=Released
[2026-04-14][15:38:54][handy_app_lib::audio_toolkit::audio::recorder][INFO] Using device: Ok("Logitech BRIO")
Sample rate: 48000
Channels: 2
Format: F32
[2026-04-14][15:38:54][handy_app_lib::managers::audio][INFO] Microphone stream initialized in 290.563541ms
[2026-04-14][15:38:54][handy_app_lib::managers::audio][DEBUG] Recording started for binding transcribe
[2026-04-14][15:38:54][handy_app_lib::actions][DEBUG] Recording started in 290.618125ms
[2026-04-14][15:38:54][handy_app_lib::actions][DEBUG] TranscribeAction::start completed in 306.075375ms
[2026-04-14][15:38:54][handy_app_lib::shortcut::handy_keys][DEBUG] Registered handy-keys shortcut: cancel -> Hotkey { modifiers: Modifiers(0x0), key: Some(Escape) }
[2026-04-14][15:38:54][handy_app_lib::actions][DEBUG] Handling delayed audio feedback/mute sequence
[2026-04-14][15:40:00][handy_app_lib::shortcut::handy_keys][DEBUG] handy-keys event: binding=transcribe, hotkey=option+space, state=Pressed
[2026-04-14][15:40:00][handy_app_lib::actions][DEBUG] TranscribeAction::stop called for binding: transcribe
[2026-04-14][15:40:00][handy_app_lib::shortcut::handy_keys][DEBUG] Unregistered handy-keys shortcut: cancel
[2026-04-14][15:40:00][enigo::platform::macos_impl][DEBUG] �[93mlocation()�[0m
[2026-04-14][15:40:00][handy_app_lib::actions][DEBUG] TranscribeAction::stop completed in 10.319708ms
[2026-04-14][15:40:00][handy_app_lib::actions][DEBUG] Starting async transcription task for binding: transcribe
[2026-04-14][15:40:00][handy_app_lib::managers::audio][DEBUG] Microphone stream stopped
[2026-04-14][15:40:00][handy_app_lib::actions][DEBUG] Recording stopped and samples retrieved in 61.130292ms, sample count: 973440
[2026-04-14][15:40:00][handy_app_lib::managers::transcription][DEBUG] Audio vector length: 973440
[2026-04-14][15:40:00][transcribe_rs::onnx::moonshine::model][DEBUG] Transcribing 973440 samples (60.84s), max_length=366
[2026-04-14][15:40:00][handy_app_lib::audio_toolkit::audio::utils][DEBUG] Saved WAV file: "/Users/srihari/Library/Application Support/com.pais.handy/recordings/handy-1776181200.wav"
[2026-04-14][15:40:00][handy_app_lib::shortcut::handy_keys][DEBUG] handy-keys event: binding=transcribe, hotkey=option+space, state=Released
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][handy_app_lib::managers::transcription][INFO] Transcription completed in 6905ms
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][handy_app_lib::managers::transcription][INFO] Transcription result: The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][handy_app_lib::actions][DEBUG] Transcription completed in 6.905496958s: 'The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very long. The intent comparison table is very'
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][handy_app_lib::actions][DEBUG] selected_language is not Simplified or Traditional Chinese; skipping translation
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][handy_app_lib::managers::history][DEBUG] Saved history entry with id 1614
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][handy_app_lib::managers::history][DEBUG] Deleted old WAV file: handy-1776180824.wav
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][handy_app_lib::managers::history][DEBUG] Cleaned up 1 old history entries by count
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][handy_app_lib::clipboard][INFO] Using paste method: CtrlV, delay: 60ms
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][enigo::platform::macos_impl][DEBUG] �[93mkey(key: Meta, direction: Press)�[0m
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][enigo::platform::macos_impl][DEBUG] �[93mraw(keycode: 55, direction: Press)�[0m
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][enigo::platform::macos_impl][DEBUG] added the keycode 55 to the held keys
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][enigo::platform::macos_impl][DEBUG] added the key Meta to the held keys
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][enigo::platform::macos_impl][DEBUG] �[93mkey(key: Other(9), direction: Click)�[0m
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][enigo::platform::macos_impl][DEBUG] �[93mraw(keycode: 9, direction: Click)�[0m
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][enigo::platform::macos_impl][DEBUG] �[93mkey(key: Meta, direction: Release)�[0m
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][enigo::platform::macos_impl][DEBUG] �[93mraw(keycode: 55, direction: Release)�[0m
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][enigo::platform::macos_impl][DEBUG] removed the keycode 55 from the held keys
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][enigo::platform::macos_impl][DEBUG] removed the key Meta from the held keys
[2026-04-14][15:40:07][handy_app_lib::actions][DEBUG] Text pasted successfully in 215.334084ms

[cjpais]

More or less this is a known issue. We're not doing chunking. So if you overrun what the model is capable of, right now it crashes or doesn't transcribe because it is not chunking in any way. So this is effectively expected behavior at the moment. Using whisper models or other models may improve performance in regards to this

A lot of models are not trained on long audio, or audio longer than 30 seconds, and they can begin to hallucinate and create very bad results. I also think that the moonshine implementation as is is not very good, and it will be replaced with a better one, but it's also quite possible that this is just a fundamental model issue as well, in the regime of these durations.

[ssrihari]

Thanks for taking a look and replying @cjpais. Appreciate the detail in the reply. I'll try other models. But I'll also build muscle memory to do shorter recordings I suppose.

I use gemini (web interface) to transcribe long audio files (15-20 minutes), and that works quite well. I get results within a minute. I don't know what they're doing differently. I appreciate Handy being local-first, but I wouldn't mind integrating with gemini (or something else) for certain cases, even if I have to explicitly key it in. Having one interface to dictate is quite useful. I completely understand if you don't want to do this, however.

[cjpais]

API support won't be merged but more robust handling of long audio will, it's in the works I just need time!

[achyutbenz19]

Circling back. The silent-fail UX on long recordings (empty transcription_history row, no user feedback) is fixable today without waiting for the Moonshine replacement.

Opened #1307. Narrow rebase of origin/chunking, batch path only, ~112 LoC, engine-agnostic duration gate that routes audio longer than 30s through transcribe-rs::VadChunked.

Verified on Moonshine medium, 70s fixture:

• before (v0.8.2): 0 chars, empty row
• after: 1747 chars, 3 VAD chunks

Drove the repro with Claude Code + audiokit for deterministic fixture injection so before/after numbers are bit-identical across runs.

Happy to keep the PR narrow or fold into #1173, whichever fits.

[cjpais]

The reason chunking is not merged yet is because it degrades performance on a variety of samples. It's not going to be merged yet

I know it's not ideal, but I know if I merge this there's just going to be other people complaining that performance got worse. Right now as a maintainer I'm not willing to trade one set of problems for another

It's important to fix this but just give me time.

[yxs]

It is definitely worth fixing; otherwise, input exceeding approximately 40 seconds will be truncated.

[cjpais]

Right now you can use streaming models which have no limitations