Dikte

Press Ctrl+Space, talk, press again. The recording is transcribed on this machine by default, a model cleans it up (dropping the uhs, the restarts, the missing punctuation), and the result lands in your clipboard and is pasted into whatever window you were typing in.

Built for KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland, and runs on GNOME X11, macOS and any other Linux desktop that will let it read the keyboard. No dependencies beyond system packages: just the Python standard library, 3.11 or newer, and PyQt6.

Türkçe README

Install

The releases page has an AppImage and a disk image per Mac architecture. Both write their own menu entry, login item and dikte command the first time they run, and stand aside for an installation already on the machine; dikte integrate --remove takes them back. The AppImage still wants the system packages below, for the sound server, the clipboard and the keyboard. The disk image is signed with no Apple certificate, so the first launch is refused until you press Open Anyway under System Settings → Privacy & Security, and macOS asks for the microphone and Accessibility again after each update; installing from a checkout is what avoids that.

sudo pacman -S --needed pipewire-audio wl-clipboard ydotool ffmpeg python-pyqt6
systemctl --user enable --now ydotool     # needed for auto-paste

./install.sh                 # or:  ./install.sh "Meta+Space" "Meta+Shift+Space"
dikte                        # the settings window opens on first run

On Fedora the packages are named differently, ffmpeg-free out of Fedora's own repositories is enough because Dikte only ever takes the audio track of a video file, and ydotool takes one step more: it ships as a system service, whose socket stays root-owned and out of your session's reach, so auto-paste fails with the daemon running. Point it at the path the client already looks at and hand the socket over:

sudo dnf install pipewire-utils wl-clipboard ydotool ffmpeg-free python3-pyqt6
sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/ydotool.service.d
printf '[Service]\nExecStart=\nExecStart=/usr/bin/ydotoold --socket-path=%s/.ydotool_socket --socket-own=%s:%s\n' \
  "$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR" "$(id -u)" "$(id -g)" \
  | sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/ydotool.service.d/override.conf >/dev/null
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now ydotool

On Ubuntu/GNOME X11, recording uses PulseAudio and clipboard/paste use the X11 tools instead:

sudo apt install pulseaudio-utils xclip xdotool ffmpeg

On macOS the same ./install.sh runs and hands over to scripts/install-mac.sh, which puts down a Dikte.app in ~/Applications, the dikte command and a LaunchAgent:

brew install pyqt ffmpeg   # pyqt brings a Python newer than Apple's 3.9 with it

./install.sh               # or:  ./install.sh "Ctrl+Option+Space" "Ctrl+Option+D"
open -a Dikte

The bundle is what macOS files the Microphone and Accessibility permissions against, and it asks for each the first time it needs one. The default there is Ctrl+Option+Space, since macOS keeps Ctrl+Space for the input-source switch, and nothing needs a logout: Dikte holds the combination itself while it runs. PyQt6 comes from brew rather than pip because Homebrew's Python refuses to be installed into, and DIKTE_PYTHON=…/venv/bin/python ./install.sh points the installer at a virtualenv instead.

Local speech to text is the one piece that has to be built by hand there: whisper.cpp publishes no macOS binary and Homebrew's is configured with WHISPER_BUILD_SERVER=OFF, so it installs whisper-cli and not the server Dikte talks to. Build it (cmake -B build -DWHISPER_BUILD_SERVER=ON -DGGML_METAL=ON && cmake --build build -j) and give Settings → API the path, or transcribe in the cloud. A meeting needs BlackHole or Loopback (brew install blackhole-2ch); dictation does not.

install.sh adds the dikte command, a menu entry, an autostart entry and the two global shortcuts, whose keys are its two arguments, or the ones already in your settings when it is given none. ./scripts/update.sh pulls and puts all of that back; ./scripts/uninstall.sh takes it away again and leaves your settings and dictations alone unless you pass --purge.

Speech to text and cleanup each pick a provider in the settings window, and both run here by default, on models of your own. The cloud is the other option: speech to text on OpenAI, Groq or OpenRouter (gpt-4o-transcribe), cleanup on OpenRouter (google/gemini-3.5-flash-lite) or, when either is installed, on Claude Code or Codex. The keys fall back to OPENAI_API_KEY, GROQ_API_KEY and OPENROUTER_API_KEY, and are stored in ~/.config/dikte/config.json, mode 600, or in ~/Library/Application Support/Dikte on a Mac. Cleanup can be switched off, in which case the raw transcript is pasted, and a thinking model's effort can be set next to it.

Using it

What	How
Start / stop recording	Ctrl+Space, or click the tray icon
Pause / resume the recording	Tray menu, dikte pause, or a key you set
Discard the recording	Ctrl+Alt+Space, tray menu, or dikte cancel
Speak a command to an agent	Tray menu → Ask Claude, or dikte ask
Start / end a meeting	Tray menu → Record a meeting, or dikte meeting
Settings	Tray menu → Settings, or dikte settings
Reload after an update	Tray menu → Restart, or dikte restart
Quit	Tray menu → Quit, or dikte quit

An indicator in the screen corner shows a red dot, a live waveform and the elapsed time, then the stage it is on. It never takes focus. Pressing Ctrl+Space again while Dikte is still working does nothing; nothing queues up. A dictation and a command to the agent do wait on each other for the microphone, which is one device, but for nothing else: each has its own indicator, and the second one stacks above the first while both are up.

Everything the settings window holds has a verb of its own too, so a script or an agent can work the whole thing: dikte record --seconds 8 says back what was said, dikte transcribe talk.mp4 --srt writes subtitles, and the settings, the history and the meetings are there beside them. dikte --help lists them, they all take --json, and only the ones needing the microphone need the application running.

What it does

• It all runs on this machine by default. Speech to text on whisper.cpp and cleanup on llama.cpp, neither installed beforehand: the settings window fetches the program and the model, verifies the sha256 and refuses a download published without one, then keeps a server alive while you dictate. The graphics card is reached through CUDA, ROCm or Vulkan where the build allows. No key, no account, nothing leaving the machine.

• Silence never reaches the API. Handed near-silence, a transcription model invents a sentence instead of returning nothing ("Thanks for watching", or in Turkish "Altyazı M.K."). A recording is dropped when nothing rose 10 dB above that recording's own noise floor for at least 0.3 s, which is also what removes steady fan noise however loud, or when its loud end sits below -55 dBFS. The indicator reports the level it measured, which is what you calibrate the threshold against.

• Misheard words are repaired. Speech models fail phonetically on proper nouns, so the cleanup model is asked to fix those from context, and to leave the word alone when the context does not make the intended one clear. The names you list under Cleanup rules go to the transcription model as a hint and to the cleanup model as a glossary, which is what lets it recognise "kuber netis":

  raw    ıı bugün şey kuber netis üzerinde çalışan servisleri güncelledim
         yani sonra grafanada bir panel açtım hani ve pay kut ile arayüzü
         şey bitirdim işte
  
  result Bugün Kubernetes üzerinde çalışan servisleri güncelledim. Sonra
         Grafana'da bir panel açtım ve PyQt ile arayüzü bitirdim.
  

• A failed cleanup is never silent. The raw transcript is still pasted so the dictation is not lost, but the indicator turns amber with the reason instead of looking like a normal run.

• A dictation can be a command instead. Its own shortcut sends the transcript to Claude Code (claude -p) rather than pasting it, and pastes back what comes of it: the answer, or a sentence saying what was done. It is the session you would have opened yourself, so your skills and connected services are there, which is what makes "put that in my calendar on Thursday at three" a thing you can say to a window that is not Claude. Codex (codex exec) runs the same way, and OpenRouter is there as a plain question-and-answer fallback for a machine with neither CLI on it. Provider, model, permissions and working directory are under Settings → Agent, and commands close together stay in one conversation.

• Meetings are recorded from the microphone and the speaker output at the same time, which settles who said what by the channel a voice arrived on instead of guessing at it. The two sides are transcribed separately and interleaved into one timestamped transcript, and a second model, configured under Settings → Meeting along with its own instruction, turns that into minutes: decisions, action items, open questions. They land in ~/.local/share/dikte/meetings and in Settings → Minutes. A run that fails keeps its recording, and a retry resumes from the transcript it already paid for.

• Audio and video files run through the same models under Settings → Audio file, optionally with [mm:ss] timestamps, chunked through ffmpeg when long, and saved as .txt or as .srt subtitles; their cleanup follows its own rules, written for subtitles, so the lines keep their place and nothing is shortened.

• History of every dictation under Settings → History, with a size limit and right-click to delete.

• Turkish and English interface, following the system locale by default.

The global shortcuts, and the logout KDE needs

KWin only reads kglobalshortcutsrc at startup, so the shortcuts install.sh writes will not fire until you log out and back in. Until then, Settings → Shortcuts → built-in listener reads /dev/input and catches the combination itself. The difference: it does not swallow the key, so Ctrl+Space also reaches the focused application (some editors will pop up autocomplete). The listener needs your user in the input group: sudo usermod -aG input $USER. On GNOME the shortcut works the moment it is installed, and on a desktop that keeps no registry at all (i3, XFCE, sway and most others) the listener is the whole mechanism: nothing is installed, nothing waits for a logout, and Settings → Shortcuts shows the command to bind if you would rather your desktop owned the keys.

Layout

Everything below is in the dikte package, which is what python3 -m dikte runs and what the __main__.py in it hands to every launcher and shortcut. scripts/ holds install-mac.sh, update.sh, uninstall.sh and release.sh; packaging/ builds the AppImage and the disk image that release.sh's tag publishes; install.sh stays at the top, and tests/ has a file per module.

app.py            entry point, tray icon, state machine
cli.py            the command line: every verb, and what it answers with
ipc.py            one request and one reply over the local socket
audio.py          PCM capture: pw-record for dictation, ffmpeg for a meeting
meeting.py        channel split, speaker labelling, cleanup, minutes
assistant.py      running a dictation through Claude Code, Codex or OpenRouter
api.py            transcription and cleanup requests (stdlib only)
cleanup.py        who rewrites the transcript: OpenRouter, here, Claude or Codex
ggml.py           whisper.cpp and llama.cpp here: fetch, verify, keep serving
hub.py            what GitHub and Hugging Face have on offer today
worker.py         transcribe → clean up → clipboard → paste
vad.py            deciding whether a recording holds speech at all
filetranscribe.py file transcription: ffmpeg, chunking, timestamps
overlay.py        the corner indicator
settings_ui.py    settings window
hotkey.py         the desktop's shortcut registry, the evdev listener, Carbon on a Mac
paste.py          wl-clipboard and ydotool wrappers, pbcopy and CoreGraphics
trayicon.py       the tray icons, drawn where there is no icon theme
integrate.py      what a downloaded build writes into the desktop it landed on
i18n.py           the string table

The indicator is drawn through XWayland, because a Wayland client cannot place a window in a screen corner; app.py sets QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb for that.

License

GPL-3.0, see LICENSE.