_     _
 __      __| |__ (_)___  _ __ ___
 \ \ /\ / /| '_ \| / __|| '__/ __|
  \ V  V / | | | | \__ \| |  \__ \
   \_/\_/  |_| |_|_|___/|_|  |___/

  speak. type. done.

Linux-first voice-to-text dictation tool, written in Rust.

Speech-to-text for Wayland, X11, Hyprland, Sway, Niri, GNOME, and KDE. Press a hotkey, speak, and your words appear at the cursor. Works with any app, any window manager, any desktop environment. Supports cloud transcription (Groq, Deepgram, OpenAI) and fully offline local transcription via whisper.cpp. Fast, private, open source.

Dictation tools like Wispr Flow and Superwhisper are not available on Linux. xhisper proved the concept works, but I kept running into limitations. whisrs takes that idea and rebuilds it in Rust as a single async process with native keyboard layout support, window tracking, and multiple transcription backends.

curl -sSL https://y0sif.github.io/whisrs/install.sh | bash

The install script downloads the latest prebuilt tarball, installs whisrs/whisrsd to /usr/local/bin, and runs interactive setup.

Pin a specific version with WHISRS_VERSION=v0.1.10 or use the cloud-only minimal build with WHISRS_MINIMAL=1. Re-run the same command later to upgrade.

To build from source instead — including custom feature flag combos or unsupported architectures — use cargo install whisrs --locked or the whisrs-git AUR package.

After install, press your hotkey to start recording, press again to stop. Text appears at your cursor.

# Pick the artifact for your arch + variant:
ARCH=x86_64   # or aarch64
curl -sSL -o whisrs.tar.gz https://github.com/y0sif/whisrs/releases/latest/download/whisrs-linux-${ARCH}.tar.gz

# Or the minimal build (cloud backends only — no whisper.cpp):
# curl -sSL -o whisrs.tar.gz https://github.com/y0sif/whisrs/releases/latest/download/whisrs-linux-${ARCH}-minimal.tar.gz

tar xzf whisrs.tar.gz
sudo install -m755 whisrs whisrsd /usr/local/bin/
sudo install -m644 contrib/99-whisrs.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm trigger
sudo usermod -aG input $USER   # log out / back in for the group change
whisrs setup

yay -S whisrs-git

cargo install whisrs

nix profile install github:y0sif/whisrs

inputs.whisrs.url = "github:y0sif/whisrs";

# Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S base-devel alsa-lib libxkbcommon clang cmake

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install build-essential libasound2-dev libxkbcommon-dev libclang-dev cmake

# Fedora
sudo dnf install gcc-c++ alsa-lib-devel libxkbcommon-devel clang-devel cmake

git clone https://github.com/y0sif/whisrs
cd whisrs
cargo install --path .

whisrs setup

bind = $mainMod, W, exec, whisrs toggle

bindsym $mod+w exec whisrs toggle

Groq is the default. For fully offline use, run whisrs setup and select Local > whisper.cpp — base.en (142 MB, ~388 MB RAM) is recommended; tiny.en (75 MB) for low-end hardware, small.en (466 MB) for higher accuracy.

For local ASR models without a Rust runtime (Moonshine, NVIDIA Parakeet, Microsoft VibeVoice-ASR), use the generic ASR sidecar backend — it talks to a small local HTTP service that hosts the model. See contrib/asr-sidecars/ for ready-to-run sidecars.

Config file: ~/.config/whisrs/config.toml — whisrs setup writes a working file. A minimal example:

[general]
backend = "groq"   # groq | deepgram-streaming | deepgram | openai-realtime | openai | local-whisper | asr-sidecar
language = "en"    # ISO 639-1 or "auto"
overlay = false    # bottom-screen recording overlay

[groq]
api_key = "gsk_..."

Env-var overrides: WHISRS_GROQ_API_KEY, WHISRS_DEEPGRAM_API_KEY, WHISRS_OPENAI_API_KEY.

For the full reference (overlay, [input], [asr-sidecar], [llm], [hotkeys], GNOME extension setup), see docs/configuration.md.

whisrs setup     # Interactive onboarding
whisrs toggle    # Start/stop recording
whisrs cancel    # Cancel recording, discard audio
whisrs status    # Query daemon state
whisrs restart   # Restart the daemon (uses the systemd user service when present)
whisrs command   # Command mode: select text + speak instruction → LLM rewrite
whisrs log       # Show recent transcription history
whisrs log -n 5  # Show last 5 entries
whisrs log --clear  # Clear all history

Note: whisrs is daily-driven on Hyprland (Arch Linux), with community confirmation on GNOME Wayland (Ubuntu 24.04 + Arch), Xorg (Ubuntu 24.04), and Niri (CachyOS). Sway, i3, and KDE reports are still wanted — if you use whisrs there, please open an issue with what works and what doesn't.

whisrs is functional and usable for daily dictation. Streaming transcription, command mode, multi-language support, system tray, OSD overlay, layout-aware injection (incl. AltGr + dead keys), the generic ASR sidecar backend (Moonshine, Parakeet, VibeVoice-ASR), and packaging for AUR / Nix / crates.io all ship today. Native local Vosk and Parakeet backends are next.

Per-release details: docs/version-roadmap.md.

See docs/troubleshooting.md.

The biggest way to help right now:

1. Test on your compositor — Sway, i3, KDE, GNOME. Report what works and what doesn't.
2. Test on your distro — Ubuntu, Fedora, NixOS, etc. Build issues, missing deps, etc.
3. Bug reports — if text goes to the wrong window, characters get dropped, or audio doesn't capture, open an issue.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup and project structure.

MIT