Dictate at your cursor

Hold the Menu key to turn your speech into text in the app you have selected. Release it to insert the words at your cursor. The Menu key often has a small sheet of paper on it, beside the right Ctrl key.

1. Click the text field where you want your words.
2. Hold Menu and speak. A panel at the top centre shows your microphone activity and a preview of the words.
3. Release Menu. The panel briefly says Finishing, inserts the text, and disappears.

The panel does not take focus or move your cursor. It follows your colour theme and motion setting. It leaves your clipboard alone and does not press Enter after the text.

Microphone and speech

Dictation uses your default PipeWire microphone. Choose it in Settings › Sound. It transcribes in English through your configured voice service, or the existing local speech service when it is running. Set up a voice service in Settings › Lab if needed. Dictation does not start a conversation with VECTOR.

The microphone closes when you release the key. A recording lasts at most two minutes. Audio and text are not kept after the recording finishes. If you select another app before release, dictation stops instead of putting the words in a different window.

To discard a recording, run:

bromigos dictate cancel

Use another button

Open Settings › Shortcuts and change Dictate at the cursor (hold). Its press and release actions move together. For example, to use F8:

bromigos keys bind F8 --default code:135

The shortcut guide explains how to change or reset a key. bromigos dictate status reports whether dictation is listening, finishing or idle.