Voice-to-text with a single hotkey
Press a key, speak, text appears. Local & private.

Hotkey Whisper runs OpenAI's Whisper model 100% locally on your GPU. No cloud. No subscription. No data leaving your machine. Just press a hotkey, speak, and watch your words appear wherever your cursor is.

How It Works

1. Press hotkey → starts recording, text appears as you speak
2. Speak naturally → words are transcribed in realtime
3. Stop talking → automatically stops after 5 seconds of silence
4. Server auto-stops after 5 minutes of inactivity (saves GPU memory)

Requirements

• Ubuntu 22.04+ (other distros may work)
• NVIDIA GPU with 4GB+ VRAM
• CUDA drivers installed

Installation

git clone https://github.com/kestavanik/hotkey-whisper
cd hotkey-whisper
./install.sh

Then set up a keyboard shortcut:

1. Settings → Keyboard → Custom Shortcuts
2. Add new shortcut with command: hotkey-whisper
3. Assign your preferred key (I use Ctrl+Alt+W)

Usage

hotkey-whisper              # Toggle recording (bind to hotkey)
hotkey-whisper status       # Check server status
hotkey-whisper stop         # Shutdown server
hotkey-whisper log          # Watch server logs

First run downloads the Whisper model (~1.5GB) and takes ~30 seconds. After that, it's instant.

Configuration

Edit ~/.config/hotkey-whisper/config.json to customize settings:

{
  "model": "base",
  "language": "en",
  "device": "cuda",
  "compute_type": "float16",
  "idle_timeout": 300,
  "silence_timeout": 5,
  "silero_sensitivity": 0.4,
  "post_speech_silence_duration": 0.5,
  "min_length_of_recording": 0.3,
  "realtime_processing_pause": 0.1,
  "typing_delay": 10
}

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
model	"base"	Whisper model: tiny, base, small, medium, large-v3
language	"en"	Language code (e.g., en, es, fr, de)
device	"cuda"	cuda for GPU, cpu for CPU-only
compute_type	"float16"	float16 for speed, float32 for accuracy
idle_timeout	300	Seconds before server auto-stops (0 = never)
silence_timeout	5	Seconds of silence before recording auto-stops
typing_delay	10	Milliseconds between keystrokes

Model Comparison

Model	VRAM	Speed	Accuracy
tiny	~1GB	Fastest	Basic
base	~1GB	Fast	Good
small	~2GB	Medium	Better
medium	~5GB	Slower	Great
large-v3	~10GB	Slowest	Best

Uninstall

./uninstall.sh

Then remove your keyboard shortcut from Settings.

License

MIT