Installing meant cloning the repository and running a shell script, which
is a fair ask of somebody who already has a terminal open and no ask at
all of anybody else. The releases page now carries an AppImage and a disk
image per Mac architecture: a push to master rebuilds a rolling "latest",
a v* tag publishes a version and leaves it there, and the Run button in
the Actions tab raises the number by running scripts/release.sh, which is
the same script and not a second copy of what it does.
Two things in the application had to give for that. A build has no
__main__.py on disk, and an AppImage is mounted somewhere new every run,
so the command a shortcut is registered with cannot go on being this
interpreter and this file; ipc.launcher() answers with the AppImage or
the bundle instead. And a build carries its own libstdc++, which every
process it starts inherits through LD_LIBRARY_PATH and none of them can
live with: ffmpeg, ydotool and wl-copy are the distribution's binaries
built against the distribution's libraries, and AppImageLauncher, which
is what starting the AppImage again goes through, refuses outright.
integrate.py puts that variable back before anything else runs.
Nothing installs itself over an installation that is already there.
install.sh's menu entry, install-mac.sh's login item and the desktop file
AppImageLauncher writes are each recognised and left alone, so trying a
download once does not quietly move the machine onto it. `dikte
integrate` is how you ask for it outright, and --remove takes it back.
The disk image carries an ffmpeg, pinned and checksummed, because macOS
records through one and ships nothing like it. It is signed ad-hoc and
not with an Apple certificate, so a first launch is refused until Open
Anyway and the permissions are asked for again after each update; both
READMEs and the release notes say so.
Ctrl+Space starts and stops a recording. The audio goes to OpenAI for
transcription, a model on OpenRouter strips the fillers and restores
punctuation, and the result is copied and pasted into the focused window.
Only the Python standard library and PyQt6 — HTTP, multipart uploads and
WAV writing are all hand-rolled.
- pw-record captures raw 16 kHz mono PCM with a live level meter
- the corner indicator is drawn through XWayland, since a Wayland client
cannot position its own window
- silence is caught before it costs an API call, relative to each
recording's own noise floor, plus a filter for the stock phrases models
invent when handed silence
- audio and video files can be transcribed too, optionally with [mm:ss]
timestamps, chunked through ffmpeg for long inputs
- global shortcut installs as a KDE custom shortcut, with an evdev
listener as a fallback until the session is restarted
- Turkish and English interface, following the system locale by default