TuxTalk
TuxTalk (formerly TalkType) is free voice dictation for Linux. Hold F8 and talk, let go, and your words are typed wherever your cursor is, in any app. Or tap F9 to start and tap again to stop. It works on Wayland and X11, on GNOME, KDE, Sway, Hyprland and more.
Everything runs on your own computer. Nothing you say is sent anywhere, and after the first download it works with no internet at all.
- NVIDIA's Parakeet by default, fast even without a graphics card, for English and 24 European languages
- OpenAI's Whisper for 99 languages, from Tiny up to Large-v3
- Any graphics card through Vulkan (NVIDIA, AMD or Intel), or CUDA on NVIDIA
- First run picks a setup for your computer and language
- Voice commands for punctuation, new lines and undo, plus your own phrases
- Optional AI corrections, also on your computer: "three o'clock, no wait, four" types "four o'clock"
- Fix a Word teaches it names and terms it keeps getting wrong
- Hands-free mode that stops by itself when you go quiet
- Back up your settings and load them on another computer
- Your dictation stats and how much typing time you saved
Compatibility: Uses the C library of the system (may need glibc 2.35 or later)
GitHub Download TuxTalk Website TuxTalk Bugtracker TuxTalk Help
Usage
TuxTalk is available as an AppImage which means "one app = one file", which you can download and run on your Linux system while you don't need a package manager and nothing gets changed in your system. Awesome!
AppImages are single-file applications that run on most Linux distributions. Download an application, make it executable, and run! No need to install. No system libraries or system preferences are altered. Most AppImages run on recent versions of Arch Linux, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and other common desktop distributions.
This AppImage uses the C library of the system and may need glibc 2.35 or later. It does not run on distributions that use a different C library (such as musl on Alpine Linux) or an older glibc.
Running TuxTalk on Linux without installation
Unlike other applications, AppImages do not need to be installed before they can be used. However, they need to be marked as executable before they can be run. This is a Linux security feature.Beware! AppImages are usually not verified by others. Follow these instructions only if you trust the developer of the software. Use at your own risk!
Download the TuxTalk AppImage and make it executable using your file manager or by entering the following commands in a terminal:
chmod +x ./*.AppImageThen double-click the AppImage in the file manager to open it.
Sandboxing TuxTalk
If you want to restrict what TuxTalk can do on your system, you can run the AppImage in a sandbox like Firejail. This is entirely optional and currently needs to be configured by the user.
Updating TuxTalk
If you would like to update to a new version, simply download the new TuxTalk AppImage.
The TuxTalk AppImage also can be updated using AppImageUpdate. Using this tool, TuxTalk can be updated by downloading only the portions of the AppImage that have actually changed since the last version.
Integrating AppImages into the system
If you would like to have the executable bit set automatically, and would like to see TuxTalk and other AppImages integrated into the system (menus, icons, file type associations, etc.), then you may want to check the optional appimaged daemon.
Note for application authors
Thanks for distributing TuxTalk in the AppImage format for all common Linux distributions. Great! Here are some ideas on how to make it even better.
Pro Tips for further enhancing the TuxTalk AppImage
Please consider making the TuxTalk AppImage self-contained, so that it does not depend on the C library of the system and runs on more distributions: ship the C library including its loader (ld-linux-*.so.*) and use it to launch the application, or link statically.
Thanks for shipping AppStream metainfo inside your AppImage. Please open a pull request on https://github.com/AppImage/appimage.github.io/blob/master/data/TuxTalk if you have changed it and would like to see this page updated accordingly.
If you would like to see a donation link for the application here, please include one in the AppStream data.