whispers

Fast speech-to-text dictation for Wayland.

whispers is local-first by default, with optional cloud ASR and rewrite backends when you want them. The normal flow is simple: press a key to start recording, press it again to transcribe and paste.

Install

# default install
cargo install whispers

# CUDA
cargo install whispers --features cuda

# local rewrite support
cargo install whispers --features local-rewrite

# CUDA + local rewrite
cargo install whispers --features cuda,local-rewrite

# no OSD
cargo install whispers --no-default-features

If you want the latest GitHub version instead of crates.io:

cargo install --git https://github.com/OneNoted/whispers --features cuda,local-rewrite

Requirements

• Linux with Wayland
• wl-copy
• access to /dev/uinput
• Rust 1.85+
• CUDA toolkit if you enable the cuda feature

If /dev/uinput is blocked, add your user to the input group and log back in:

sudo usermod -aG input $USER

Quick Start

# generate config and download a model
whispers setup

# one-shot dictation
whispers

# live mode
whispers voice

Default config path:

~/.config/whispers/config.toml

Canonical example config:

• config.example.toml

Keybinding

Hyprland:

bind = SUPER ALT, D, exec, whispers

Sway:

bindsym $mod+Alt+d exec whispers

Commands

# setup
whispers setup

# dictation
whispers
whispers voice
whispers transcribe audio.wav

# ASR models
whispers asr-model list
whispers asr-model download large-v3-turbo
whispers asr-model select large-v3-turbo

# rewrite models
whispers rewrite-model list
whispers rewrite-model download qwen-3.5-4b-q4_k_m
whispers rewrite-model select qwen-3.5-4b-q4_k_m

# personalization
whispers dictionary add "wisper flow" "Wispr Flow"
whispers snippets add signature "Best regards,\nNotes"

# cloud
whispers cloud check

# shell completions
whispers completions zsh

Notes

• Local ASR is the default.
• Local rewrite is installed automatically with --features local-rewrite.
• whispers installs the helper rewrite worker for you when that feature is enabled.
• Shell completions are printed to stdout.

License

Mozilla Public License 2.0