Dictation

Dictation

Dictation is the core TypeWhisper workflow: press your hotkey, talk, and have transcribed text land in whatever application you are using. This page covers the activation modes and the dictation settings exposed in the Linux UI.

📸 Screenshot needed: The Dictation page in full, showing the model state, activation-mode selector, and the list of dictation settings (whisper mode, silence auto-stop, sound feedback, audio ducking, media pause, etc.).

Activation modes

You choose how the main global dictation hotkey behaves:

Mode	Behavior
Toggle	Press to start recording, press again to stop.
Push to talk	Hold the key to record; release to stop.
Hybrid	Starts on press. A short tap keeps recording (toggle-style); holding past ~600 ms stops on release (push-to-talk-style).

📸 Screenshot needed: The activation-mode selector with Toggle, Push to talk, and Hybrid options visible.

See Global hotkeys for assigning and registering the dictation hotkey.

Cancel in flight

Press Escape during recording, transcription, or post-processing to cancel the dictation in flight. This is only active while a dictation is running, so it does not shadow modal dialogs or editors when you are not dictating.

Auto-paste

Turn on auto-paste to have transcribed text inserted automatically after transcription completes. How that text is delivered depends on your per-app strategy — see Text insertion.

The recording overlay

📸 Screenshot needed: The dictation overlay during an active recording, showing the live microphone preview / waveform.

While you dictate, TypeWhisper shows a live microphone preview and a recording overlay. When a streaming-capable transcription engine is active, live partial-transcript text appears in the overlay as you speak. LLM responses stream into the overlay and the prompt palette token by token.

📸 Screenshot needed: The overlay showing live partial-transcript text appearing during streaming transcription.

You can configure which overlay widgets show (Indicator, Waveform, Text) on the Appearance page. Streaming behavior depends on the engine — see Transcription engines.

Dictation settings

The Linux UI exposes these dictation settings:

Setting	What it does
Whisper mode	Optimizes for quiet/whispered speech.
Silence auto-stop	Automatically stops recording after detected silence.
Sound feedback	Plays a cue when recording starts/stops.
Audio ducking	Lowers other audio while you record.
Media pause	Pauses media playback during recording.
Aggressive short-clip transcription	Transcribes short, quiet utterances that would otherwise be discarded as silence.

Short-speech policy

A short-speech policy uses peak-level and duration thresholds so that accidental taps and silent clips are dropped before they reach the transcription engine. The aggressive short-clip transcription option works in the opposite direction, keeping short quiet utterances that would otherwise be discarded.

📸 Screenshot needed: A dictation setting in its disabled state with the inline explanation of a missing external tool (for example, sound feedback disabled because canberra-gtk-play is not installed).

External-tool dependencies

Several dictation features depend on external desktop tools. When a tool is missing, the Linux UI disables the relevant control and explains why (including session-aware install hints).

Feature	Tool required
Sound feedback	canberra-gtk-play
Audio ducking	pactl
Media pause	playerctl

Clipboard-backed auto-paste and text delivery rely on additional tools — see Text insertion and Wayland notes.

Related pages

• Global hotkeys — assign and register the dictation hotkey.
• Text insertion — how transcribed text reaches the target app.
• Text cleanup — post-processing applied to dictation.
• Appearance — overlay widgets (Indicator, Waveform, Text).
• Transcription engines — which engines support live streaming.

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Changelog

Date	Change
2026-06-17	Initial version.