A lightweight Windows application that enables dictation anywhere on your system. Press a global hotkey to record your voice, and murmur segments speech in real time, transcribes with OpenAI's Whisper model running locally, and copies the cleaned document to your clipboard when you stop.
The documentation site contains the complete setup, usage, configuration, privacy, pipeline, and troubleshooting guides:
To preview the full MkDocs site locally from the repository root:
venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pip install mkdocs-material pymdown-extensions
venv\Scripts\python.exe -m mkdocs serveThen open http://127.0.0.1:8000/.
- Global Hotkey - Works across all Windows applications
- Local Inference - Whisper runs locally; remote Ollama endpoints are opt-in
- GPU Accelerated - Fast transcription with CUDA support
- Live VAD Segmentation - Detects speech chunks while you are recording
- Lower Stop Latency - Starts serial Whisper work before you release the hotkey
- Clipboard Integration - Copies the final transcription automatically
- Auto-Pause Media - Pauses playing media during recording
- System Tray - Runs in the background with a status icon
- Settings GUI - Configure hotkey, model, and auto-start
- Training Data Logging - Optional local-only audio/transcript capture
- Final LLM Cleanup - Optional Ollama cleanup pass for punctuation and light correction
- Local Vocabulary Overrides - Use
user_vocab.jsonfor preferred spellings and names
murmur supports Windows 10/11 and Python 3.12. A microphone is required; an NVIDIA GPU and Ollama are optional.
py -3.12 -m venv venv
venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pip install -e ".[dev]"
venv\Scripts\python.exe run.pySee Getting Started for CUDA installation, Ollama setup, background launch, first-run behavior, and the recording flow.
To build the standalone Windows application folder with PyInstaller:
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\build_windows.ps1The validated output is written to dist\murmur\. Distribute the complete
folder. For manual per-user use, extract it to
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\murmur and optionally create a Desktop shortcut to
murmur.exe. Keep the application files together. See Build a packaged
release for requirements and
repeat-build instructions.
Run the project checks from the repository virtual environment:
venv\Scripts\python.exe -m ruff format --check .
venv\Scripts\python.exe -m ruff check .
venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pytestSee the development and documentation instructions for the MkDocs build command.