Win Dictation Dev
5.3 KiB
5.3 KiB
Win Dictation — Voice to Text for Windows
A push-to-talk speech-to-text utility for Windows. Press a hotkey, speak, and your words land in whatever app you were just using — fully offline, powered by Whisper.
Quick Download
Go to the Releases page, download WinDictation.zip, extract, and run win-dictation.exe. The release includes all required DLLs and a Whisper model.
Documentation
- User Manual — How to use every feature
- Architecture & Engineering Review — Deep dive into the codebase for developers
Features
Performance
- Physical-core threading: Uses one thread per physical core for efficient batch transcription
- CPU-only: Optimised for ordinary laptops — no GPU required
- Self-calibrating progress: Learns transcription speed per model and machine, delivering a smooth countdown
User Interface
- Single-surface rendering: No inter-window seams or hairlines — the entire UI is one painted surface
- Dark theme: Calm, elevated card design with hover/press feedback
- Per-monitor DPI awareness: Looks sharp at any display scale
- System tray: Minimise to tray, global hotkey to record
Audio Processing
- Push-to-talk: Press Ctrl+Shift+Space, speak, press again to transcribe
- Multiple microphones: Select from all available input devices
- 16 kHz sample rate: Optimised for Whisper
- Silence trimming: Leading and trailing silence is trimmed before transcription
Quick Start
- Launch
win-dictation.exe - Click into wherever you want text, then press
Ctrl+Shift+Space - Speak, then press
Ctrl+Shift+Spaceagain - Your words appear in the app you were using
Full instructions in the User Manual.
Controls
- Record/Stop: Click the pill or press
Ctrl+Shift+Space - Hide window:
Ctrl+Shift+H - Pin: Keep window always-on-top
- Copy / Paste / Clear: Text actions below the transcript
- Model / Mic / History: Select from popup menus
Building from Source
Prerequisites
- Windows 10/11
- CMake 3.5+
- Visual Studio 2022 with C++ workload
- SDL2 (included in deps/)
Build Steps
cmake -S . -B build -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" ^
-DSDL2_DIR="deps/SDL2-2.28.5/cmake"
cmake --build build --config Release
The executable will be at build\bin\Release\win-dictation.exe.
Technical Details
Architecture
Hotkey → SDL Capture → Stop → Batch whisper_full → Text → Auto-paste
- SDL audio capture: 16 kHz mono recording into memory. CPU stays near idle while recording.
- Stop-and-transcribe: One
whisper_fullcall processes the full clip at once. - Progress estimation: Decayed online least-squares model per machine/model, fused with whisper's chunk progress into a strictly monotonic countdown.
- Text output: Inserted at cursor with smart spacing, copied to clipboard, and optionally auto-pasted into the window you came from.
Models
Place .bin files in models/ next to the executable, or download them from the Settings screen in-app:
| Model | Size | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| tiny.en | ~75 MB | Fastest — everyday dictation |
| tiny.en-q8_0 | ~42 MB | Same speed, smaller file |
| base.en-q5_1 | ~59 MB | Good accuracy bump for little cost |
| base.en | ~142 MB | More accurate; still reasonable on two cores |
| small.en-q5_1 | ~182 MB | Accurate, but slower |
| small.en | ~466 MB | Most accurate — and slowest |
Project Structure
win-dictation/
├── src/ # Application source
│ ├── main.cpp # Window, painting, interaction, settings, clipboard, popups
│ ├── transcriber.* # SDL capture, Whisper preload/inference, progress callbacks
│ ├── timing.h # Learned timing model + live progress estimator
│ ├── history.h # Session text files, index, pruning
│ ├── downloader.h # WinHTTP model downloader (background thread)
│ ├── stats.h # Lifetime usage totals + derived figures
│ ├── settings.h # INI persistence
│ ├── text_util.h # Transcript concatenation helpers
│ ├── logging.h # Timestamped file log
│ └── tests/ # Unit tests (test-core.exe)
├── whisper/ # Whisper.cpp library
├── ggml/ # GGML tensor library
├── models/ # Whisper model files
├── history/ # Saved dictation sessions
├── release/ # Pre-built package
└── CMakeLists.txt # Build configuration
License
GNU General Public License v3.0
This project is licensed under GPLv3. It incorporates whisper.cpp (MIT), ggml (MIT), and SDL2 (zlib).