Global Hotkeys

Global Hotkeys

Global hotkeys let you trigger TypeWhisper from any application without bringing the app to the foreground. This page covers the available hotkeys, the Shortcuts settings panel, and how global hotkey detection works on Wayland.

📸 Screenshot needed: The Shortcuts settings panel showing the configured hotkeys and the per-desktop auto-setup controls.

Available hotkeys

Hotkey	What it does
Main dictation hotkey	The one global hotkey that starts/stops dictation (behavior depends on your activation mode).
Prompt palette hotkey	Optional hotkey that opens the prompt palette.
Recent-transcriptions palette	Opens the palette of recent transcriptions.
Copy-last-transcription	Copies your most recent transcription.
Transform-selection	Voice-edits the text currently selected in another application.

See Dictation for how the main hotkey behaves in Toggle, Push to talk, and Hybrid activation modes.

Shortcuts settings panel

📸 Screenshot needed: The Shortcuts panel with the one-click auto-setup flow, showing the active desktop environment being detected.

The Shortcuts settings panel includes per-desktop shortcut writers for GNOME, KDE, Hyprland, and Sway, with a one-click auto-setup flow. This registers your configured TypeWhisper hotkey with the active desktop environment so you do not have to hand-edit config files.

Wayland global hotkey detection

On Wayland, TypeWhisper detects global hotkeys through an evdev backend that reads /dev/input/event* directly. Because it reads input devices directly, the configured shortcut fires regardless of which window has focus.

• Enabled by default.
• Requires the current user to be in the input group.
• Fallback chain: if the evdev path is unavailable, it falls back to the XDG portal, then to focused-only SharpHook.
• Can be turned off from Settings → Shortcuts to keep focused-only behavior.

📸 Screenshot needed: The Settings → Shortcuts toggle that enables/disables the Wayland evdev global hotkey backend.

For more on Wayland-specific behavior and setup, see Wayland notes.

Related pages

• Dictation — activation modes for the main dictation hotkey.
• Wayland notes — evdev backend, input group, and portal fallbacks.
• Desktop integration — autostart and tray behavior.
• Prompts — actions surfaced through the prompt palette.

---

Changelog

Date	Change
2026-06-17	Initial version.