Dictation

Marchyo can add push-to-talk voice dictation to the Hyprland desktop using voxtype with OpenAI Whisper. Hold F9 to dictate (push-to-talk), or press Super+Ctrl+X to toggle recording on and off; the transcribed text is typed at the cursor (with a clipboard fallback).

It is off by default — it needs a microphone and downloads a Whisper model. When enabled, the full desktop UI comes with it: a Waybar recording indicator, desktop notifications, start/stop sound cues, and a Super+Shift+H floating status window. Each surface is on by default and individually opt-out.

Options

Option	Type	Default	Description
marchyo.dictation.enable	bool	false	Enable voxtype dictation (hold F9 push-to-talk + a Super+Ctrl+X toggle bind)
marchyo.dictation.pushToTalk.enable	bool	true	Daemon evdev hold hotkey; adds dictation users to the input group
marchyo.dictation.pushToTalk.key	str	"F9"	evdev key held to record (e.g. "SCROLLLOCK", "PAUSE", "F13")
marchyo.dictation.pushToTalk.mode	str	"push_to_talk"	"push_to_talk" (hold) or "toggle" (press to start/stop)
marchyo.dictation.toggleKey	str	"SUPER CTRL, X"	Hyprland bind for voxtype record toggle; null to unbind
marchyo.dictation.gpu	bool	true	Use the Vulkan GPU build (voxtype-vulkan); false for the CPU-only build
marchyo.dictation.model	str	"large-v3-turbo"	Whisper model voxtype loads
marchyo.dictation.language	str	"auto"	Spoken language ("auto" detects per utterance; pin with an ISO code like "en")
marchyo.dictation.preloadModel	bool	false	Pre-download the model at activation instead of on first recording
marchyo.dictation.indicator	bool	true	Show a recording-state segment on Waybar (driven by voxtype status --follow)
marchyo.dictation.notify	bool	true	Desktop notifications on record start/stop and transcription
marchyo.dictation.audioFeedback	bool	true	Start/stop sound cues
marchyo.dictation.statusWindow	bool	true	Bind Super+Shift+H to a floating status window

marchyo.dictation = {
  enable = true;
  # model = "large-v3-turbo";  # multilingual + fast (default)
  # language = "auto";         # detect per utterance
  # preloadModel = true;       # fetch the model at activation time
  # indicator = false;         # drop the Waybar segment
  # notify = false;            # silence desktop notifications
  # audioFeedback = false;     # silence start/stop cues
  # statusWindow = false;      # drop the Super+Shift+H window
};

Note

With preloadModel = false (the default) the ~1.5 GB Whisper model downloads on the first recording, so a nixos-rebuild never blocks on the network. Set preloadModel = true to fetch it at activation time via voxtype’s model-loader service instead (that step needs network access when it runs).

How it works

Enabling the option wires the upstream Home Manager services.voxtype module:

• Writes ~/.config/voxtype/config.toml and runs the voxtype user service. wayland.display is set so the daemon gets WAYLAND_DISPLAY plus wtype/wl-clipboard on its PATH for typing into Wayland windows.
• Recording is driven two ways: the daemon’s evdev push-to-talk hotkey (hold F9 by default) and a Hyprland bind (marchyo.dictation.toggleKey, default Super+Ctrl+X) that runs voxtype record toggle. The evdev hotkey needs /dev/input access, so dictation users are added to the input group while pushToTalk.enable is set (a real privilege — set it false to rely only on the compositor toggle).
• Output mode is type (types at the cursor) with clipboard fallback.
• The Waybar indicator streams voxtype status --follow (JSON) and recolors by state; notifications and sound cues use voxtype’s built-in [output.notification] / [audio.feedback]; Super+Shift+H opens a floating terminal running voxtype status --follow.

Check the daemon with systemctl --user status voxtype.