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Custom Wake Words (Prior to v0.12.0)

Mark Parker edited this page Jun 12, 2026 · 3 revisions

Note

For v0.12.0 and above, see Custom Files as the new way to set custom wake words, wake sounds and alarm sounds

Requires a minimum of v0.6.0 (Android 8, 8.1 & 9) or 0.6.1 (Android 10+)

Important

This app and integration does not help you create new wake words but allows use of any onnx wake word file designed for OpenWakeWord. The quality of community wake word files can be very varied and no support will be given for detection issues relating to custom wake words. Equally, creating your own wake word is an advanced topic and will take some time to do.

In order to use your own wake word file, please follow the below steps.

Step 1 - Get an onnx file for your wake word

You have 2 main options for custom wake words. There are many custom wake word files available on the community github page for OpenWakeWord or you can create your own using the instructions on how to train new models on the OpenWakeWord github.

Step 2a - Load this onto your VACA device - Android 9 and below

The file needs to be stored on your device and needs to be located in a folder called vaca (all lowercase) within the Downloads folder. If you are using adb or similar to copy the file this should be located at storage/emulated/0/Download/vaca.

Step 2b - Load this onto your VACA device - Android 10 and above

The file needs to be stored on your device and needs to be located in a folder called vaca (all lowercase) within the applications file folder. If you are using adb or similar to copy the file this should be located at data/data/com.msp1974.vacompanion/files/vaca.

In order to create the folder and copy the file there, follow these steps with adb. Obviously replace the file name specified with the one you are copying from your machine. For subsequent files you wish to load, you can skip the first step of creating the directory.

adb shell "run-as com.msp1974.vacompanion mkdir /data/data/com.msp1974.vacompanion/files/vaca"
adb push /path/to/hey_robot.onnx /data/local/tmp/
adb shell "run-as com.msp1974.vacompanion cp /data/local/tmp/hey_robot.onnx /data/data/com.msp1974.vacompanion/files/vaca/"

Step 3 - Make available in the HA selector

Once you have saved the file into that directory, you finally need to reload the devices config in order to update the list of available wake words. This can be done by using the reload option on the instance in Devices & Services -> VACA, restarting the app on the device or restarting HA (which ever you find easiest to do). Your custom wake word should now appear in the drop down selector for wake words on that device and allow you to select it for use.

To use your wake word on multiple devices, you will need to repeat this process for each device.

Enjoy!

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