Welcoming Myna, and where EasySpeak fits in

[ctsdownloads]

Oct. 19, 2026

I'm Matt Hartley, founder, creator and product manager of EasySpeak, a fully local, open-source voice control system for the Linux desktop. EasySpeak is a community project that I work on in my own time, on weekends and personal time off. Peter Bittner is our most active and extremely valued contributor, and EasySpeak wouldn't be where it is without him.

Canonical introduced Myna, its local speech-to-text dictation project for Ubuntu, in June, and on Oct. 12 released it as a technology preview (https://ubuntu.com/blog/myna-speech-to-text-technology-preview-available). You press a hotkey, speak, and your words are typed into the app you're using. Canonical says it will be included by default as Ubuntu 28.04 LTS approaches. That's great news for everyone on Linux. Shipping private dictation by default in Ubuntu will put it in front of more people than any small project could, and it tells people that on-device voice tools belong on the desktop. That's the same belief EasySpeak was built on.

How EasySpeak fits in

Myna and EasySpeak serve different needs. Canonical describes Myna as deliberately focused on dictation, while EasySpeak is built for people who want to control their whole computer by voice. Alongside dictation, it offers:

• Wake word activation, so you can work hands-free.
• Spoken feedback, including when something goes wrong.
• Browser control with numbered link hints.
• An on-screen grid for pointing and clicking by voice.
• Head tracking for pointer control.
• Opening apps and folders, and media controls.
• A plugin architecture so the community can add new commands.

EasySpeak uses no cloud services and no large language models. Everything runs on small, offline speech models on your own computer. It supports English, German, Italian, French and Spanish, though the mouse grid, browser and head tracking modes currently take English commands. EasySpeak is GPL-licensed and community-driven.

What's next

Already in the codebase for the next release:

• Filtering steady background noise out of the microphone.
• Voice control for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and airplane mode.

Coming soon:

• Managing windows, workspaces and screenshots by voice.
• Voice access to GNOME desktop tools such as Settings, Software and Extensions.
• Opening any installed app just by saying its name.
• Repeating a command by adding a number, for example "nudge up 5" to move the mouse pointer up five small steps.

Accessibility for everyone

Accessibility has to reach as many desktops as possible, and that's our long-term goal. EasySpeak is meant to be inclusive as well as accessible. GNOME is our main desktop today, and we've started on KDE Plasma. Plasma support is still very early and many features aren't there yet, including the mouse grid, head tracking and typing dictated text. It's good to see Canonical planning Myna support for other desktops too.

We hope Myna and EasySpeak inspire other projects to treat accessibility as a core part of their software from day one, not something added later. The more projects that do, the better Linux gets for everyone.

EasySpeak works best on GNOME, with very early KDE Plasma support. Packages are available in .deb and .rpm formats and have been tested on Ubuntu and Fedora. NixOS support is in progress.

Documentation: https://easyspeak.dev/latest/
Downloads: https://github.com/ctsdownloads/easyspeak/releases

Questions or feedback: Reply below

Press: matt@matthartley.com