Voice Type

June 25, 2026 · View on GitHub

System-wide speech-to-text for Linux. Press a key, speak, text appears wherever your cursor is.

Runs Chrome's Web Speech API in the background — no local models, no API keys, no startup delay. Works in editors, terminals, browsers. If a transcript corrects mid-sentence, Voice Type backspaces and retypes it.

Requirements: Linux desktop, microphone, Chrome or Chromium.

Install

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eriknovikov/voice-type/main/install.sh | bash

The installer handles binary, dotool (built from source), browser detection, and config. Pin a version with -- --version v3.1.0.

Keyboard shortcuts

Set these up in your desktop environment's keyboard settings (GNOME Settings → Keyboard, KDE System Settings → Shortcuts, etc.):

Action	Command
Start/stop daemon	`sh -c "curl -s http://localhost:3232/exit \|\| voice-type"`
Dictate (English)	`curl -s http://localhost:3232/toggle?lang=en-US`
Dictate (Spanish)	`curl -s http://localhost:3232/toggle?lang=es-ES`

Bind each command to whatever key you want. The installer prints these commands at the end.

Usage

Start daemon — press your daemon shortcut (Chrome loads, mic off)
Dictate — press your toggle shortcut (speak, text appears live)
Stop dictation — press toggle again
Stop daemon — press daemon shortcut again

Spoken punctuation (English)

On by default. Say comma, period, question mark, new line, etc. — they type as symbols/keys. Capitalization is automatic at sentence starts.

Toggle at runtime: curl localhost:3232/togglePunctuation

Multiple languages

Bind a separate key to each language command above. Each toggles dictation in its own language — no restart needed.

Full language list

Config

~/.config/voice-type.jsonc — JSON with // comments. Written on first run.

{
    "port": 3232,
    "lang": "en-US",
    "browser_path": "/usr/bin/google-chrome",
    "stream": true,
    "sound": false,
    "text": false,
    "punctuation": true,
}

Restart the daemon after editing.

Update

voice-type update

Troubleshooting

dotool — Must be in input group: sudo usermod -aG input $USER && newgrp input

Browser not found — Set browser_path in config to your Chrome/Chromium path.

Logs — ~/.local/share/voice-type/logs/voice-type.log (background) or stdout (terminal).

command not found — export PATH="$PATH:/usr/local/bin"

Uninstall

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eriknovikov/voice-type/main/uninstall.sh | bash

Or manually:

sudo rm /usr/local/bin/voice-type
rm -rf ~/.config/voice-type.jsonc ~/.config/voice-type.jsonc.bak ~/.local/share/voice-type

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