github.com/AshBuk/dabri @v2.2.0

🗣️ Linux speech-to-text, the Unix way

Dabri is a minimalist, privacy-first application for offline voice recognition directly into any active window (editors, browsers, IDEs, AI assistants).

Written in pure Go, it leverages whisper.cpp for fast, offline transcription. The architecture is built from the ground up with a minimal set of dependencies, featuring a custom dependency injection factory, ensuring lean and maintainable design.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b798f350-c6a8-4408-83eb-51eef392a731

Features

▸ aemon: Dabri runs quietly in the background and integrates into the system tray for convenient management.

▸ Terminal: it can also be invoked as a CLI tool (see CLI Usage Guide) for scripting purposes.

▸ For integration enthusiasts, a WebSocket server is available at localhost:8080. Enable it in your config with web_server enabled: true (disabled by default).

• Offline speech-to-text, privacy-first: all processing happens locally
• Portable: AppImage package
• Cross-platform support for X11 and Wayland
• Linux DEs: native integration with GNOME, KDE, and others
• GPU + CPU support: Vulkan backend for faster transcription (auto-fallback to CPU)
• Voice typing or clipboard mode
• Flexible audio recording: arecord (ALSA) or ffmpeg (PulseAudio/PipeWire), see audio pipeline
• Multi-language support, custom hotkey binding, visual notifications
• Model management: switch between base, small, medium, large-v3-turbo, and large-v3 whisper models via tray or CLI

Beyond Minimalism

Intuitive minimalist UX, robust STT infrastructure. A foundation for voice-controlled automation:

• Dual API: Unix socket IPC + WebSocket — script locally or integrate remotely
• Interface-driven: focused contracts — swap STT engines, add I/O methods, extend hotkey providers
• Daemon + CLI: background hub + stateless commands — perfect for IoT pipelines
• Graceful degradation: provider fallbacks, optional components, no crashes

# Voice command → smart home action
transcript=$(dabri --json stop | jq -r '.data.transcript')
[[ "$transcript" == *"lights off"* ]] && curl -X POST http://hub/lights/off

✦ Installation

AppImage

Download the latest AppImage from Releases:

# Download the file, then:
chmod +x dabri-*.AppImage
./dabri-*.AppImage

Arch Linux AUR:

yay -S dabri

Fedora COPR:

sudo dnf copr enable ashbuk/dabri
sudo dnf install dabri

Desktop Environment Compatibility

📋 Desktop Environment Support Guide - help us test different desktop environments!

For system tray integration on GNOME — install the AppIndicator extension ↑

KDE and other DEs have built-in system tray support out of the box

Automatic typing and clipboard modes both work out of the box — details & options ↑

For issues and bug reports: GitHub Issues

See changes: Releases

System Requirements

📋 Supported Distributions

For Developers

Start onboarding with:

• ARCHITECTURE.md — system architecture and component design
• DEVELOPMENT.md — development workflow and build instructions
• CONTRIBUTING.md — contribution guidelines and how to help improve the project
• docker/README.md — Docker-based development
• Article

✦ Acknowledgments

• whisper.cpp for the excellent C++ implementation of OpenAI Whisper
• fyne.io/systray for cross-platform system tray support
• ydotool and wtype for Wayland-compatible input automation
• OpenAI for the original Whisper model

✦ MIT LICENSE

If you use this project, please link back to this repo and ⭐ it if it helped you. - Consider contributing back improvements

Sharing with the community for privacy-conscious Linux users

Sponsor

Please consider supporting development