VoxCtrl v0.8.4

What's new in 0.8.4

New: live text in every overlay. All eight built-in overlay styles now
show the words being transcribed while you speak, each drawn in its own look:
a TRANSCRIPT field on the Voice Card, a readout under the Waveform trace, a
log beside the Pulse dial, words in the Ocean Wave sky, a caption under Mono
Bars, a lyric line under Neon Spectrum, output lines in the Terminal and a
typed label under the Vinyl meter. When you stop talking, the finished
transcript replaces the live words before the overlay closes. Turn it on or
off in Settings → Visual & Feedback → Show live transcript in overlay
(on by default). With it off, every overlay looks exactly as before.

New: corrections as you speak. The newest words are drawn dimmer while
the speech engine may still correct them, and settle once two passes agree
on them.

Fixed: live text froze after about ten seconds. In custom overlays that
showed live text, the words stopped updating once you had been speaking for
about ten seconds and stayed frozen until the overlay closed. Live text now
keeps up however long you talk, and each update stays quick, because the
audio is finalized in pieces at the pauses between words instead of being
transcribed again from the start.

For overlay authors. Custom overlays can now show settled and
still-changing words separately (data-voxctrl-live-committed and
data-voxctrl-live-tentative), and can react to the setting and to the
final transcript through --voxctrl-live-enabled and --voxctrl-live-final.
The original data-voxctrl-live-text element keeps working. The Custom/
example shows how, and all six overlays in the
overlays repository
have been updated. See Overlays.

Notes

Live text runs extra transcription while you record. It is skipped
automatically with the remote speech engine and with medium or large Whisper
models running without a GPU, where it would fall behind your speech. The
words are on screen in screen shares, so switch the setting off if that
matters to you. An existing Custom/ overlay folder is never changed; delete
it to get the new example.

Downloads

Pick the build for your platform and GPU:

Platform	File suffix	GPU required
Linux	-linux-x86_64-vulkan.AppImage	None — GPU used if present
Linux (newer distros)	-linux-x86_64-vulkan-webgpu.AppImage	None — GPU used if present; also accelerates Moonshine and Parakeet. Needs glibc 2.38+ (Ubuntu 24.04, Fedora 39, Debian 13, Arch and similar)
Windows	-windows-x86_64-webgpu.exe	None — GPU used if present

There is one Windows build. It accelerates the Moonshine and
Parakeet speech engines on any Direct3D 12 GPU — NVIDIA, AMD or
Intel — through ONNX Runtime's WebGPU provider, and runs on the CPU
when no usable GPU is found, so it replaces the separate CPU
installer rather than sitting beside it. Each engine has its own
GPU acceleration checkbox in Settings → Engine, and the chip
beside the engine's name says which device it is using. Whisper.cpp still runs on the CPU on Windows either
way, because its only GPU path here is ggml's Vulkan backend, which
does not register on Windows MSVC static builds. If your GPU is not
usable the app says so in the log and falls back to the CPU rather
than pretending. If you were running the separate CPU installer,
VoxCtrl's own updater will move you onto this one; nothing to do.

Linux has two builds. The Vulkan AppImage accelerates
any NVIDIA/AMD/Intel GPU through the host Vulkan driver and runs on
the CPU when there is no Vulkan device, so it replaces the separate
CPU AppImage rather than sitting beside it — the same file is right
whether or not you have a GPU. The Vulkan + WebGPU AppImage is the same
app plus GPU acceleration for Moonshine and Parakeet; it bundles Dawn, which
needs glibc 2.38 or newer, so it will not start on Ubuntu 22.04 or Debian 12 —
use the plain Vulkan AppImage there. VoxCtrl's updater keeps each install on
the variant it is running. If you were running the old CPU AppImage, the
updater moves you onto the Vulkan one; nothing to do.

To keep an engine on the CPU regardless, untick GPU acceleration for it
in Settings → Engine. Worth doing if your only Vulkan device is a software
rasterizer such as Mesa's lavapipe, which is slower than the CPU
backend.

The Linux .deb now requires libvulkan1, which the package
manager pulls in for you.

The Windows build is an NSIS installer, not code-signed yet, so
SmartScreen will warn that the publisher is unknown: choose
More info → Run anyway.

Windows — first run

Windows 10 21H2 or newer, or Windows 11. Everything VoxCtrl needs is
in the installer; WebView2 ships with Windows 11 and the installer
fetches it on older builds.

Two things are worth knowing before the first dictation:

• Microphone access. Windows denies it silently. If dictation
  produces nothing, check Settings → Privacy & security →
  Microphone and allow desktop apps.
• Global shortcuts arrive through a Windows keyboard hook, so
  every gesture works — but Windows does not deliver keys to it
  while an elevated application has focus, or on the UAC prompt and
  lock screen. Shortcuts do not fire there, and dictated text cannot
  be typed into an elevated window unless VoxCtrl is elevated too.

Linux — first run

The Vulkan AppImage needs glibc 2.35 or newer (Ubuntu 22.04+, Linux Mint 21+,
Debian 12+, Fedora 36+, Arch); the Vulkan + WebGPU one needs 2.38 or newer.
Nothing has to be installed first — not even libfuse2.

# The file you downloaded: -vulkan.AppImage or -vulkan-webgpu.AppImage
APP=./VoxCtrl-linux-x86_64-vulkan.AppImage
chmod +x "$APP"
# Optional: installs the desktop entry and text-injection helpers.
# Global shortcuts need no permissions — your desktop handles them.
"$APP" --install
# Launch the application
"$APP"

What's Changed

• Live text in every overlay; fix live text freezing after 10 s by @JRufer in #171
• Bump version to 0.8.4 by @JRufer in #172

Full Changelog: v0.8.3...v0.8.4