blitztext-app-linux/linux/CHANGELOG.md

Changelog

All notable changes to Blitztext for Linux (the native dictation tool in linux/) are documented here. The format follows Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

The version is defined in blitztext/__init__.py.

Unreleased

[2.03.41] - 2026-06-10

Added

• Cancel button shown during transcription and rewriting. The × button in the top-right corner of the overlay is now visible and clickable in the busy state (Transcribing… / Rewriting…), not only while recording. Clicking it during transcription discards the result once the STT call returns. Clicking it during a rewrite breaks out of the LLM stream immediately — the partial text is discarded and nothing is typed.

[2.03.40] - 2026-06-10

Changed

• Documentation overhaul with screenshots. Renamed 21 raw screenshots to meaningful filenames (main-panel.png, overlay-listening.png, settings-presets.png, settings-general.png, settings-keyboard.png, settings-wakeword.png, settings-stt-engines.png, settings-llm-engines.png, settings-benchmark-stt.png, settings-benchmark-wakeword.png, settings-log.png, settings-manual.png, settings-about.png, and 7 setup-wizard screens).
• README.md / linux/README.md updated with organized screenshot sections (Main panel & overlay, Settings — General & Input, Settings — Engines, Settings — Benchmark, Settings — Log & About, Setup wizard) using click-to-enlarge image links.
• MANUAL.md rewritten to match the new sidebar navigation: intro updated; section headers renamed (Engines tab → STT Engines / LLM Engines; Input tab → Keyboard + Wakeword; Benchmark tab → Benchmark — STT / Benchmark — Wakeword); screenshot added at the top of every section including Manual and About pages.

[2.03.39] - 2026-06-10

Fixed

• Remaining horizontal scrollbars eliminated. Root causes: (1) infobox max_width_chars was 72 — at typical system font sizes (9 px/char) this produced a natural width wider than the ~677 px content area; reduced to 58. (2) Engine-selector combos (stt_combo, llm_combo, ww_combo) and the _combo() helper had no constraint on CellRendererText width — long engine names or ALSA device names drove the combo's natural width to 300–500 px. Fixed by adding _ellipsize_combo() (sets ellipsize=END and max-width-chars=28 on the internal CellRendererText) to all combos. (3) _STT_TYPES, _LLM_TYPES, _DEVICE_OPTIONS, _COMPUTE_OPTIONS labels were 40–52 characters; shortened to ≤27 chars.

Changed

• Wakeword Cancel/Send word rows split into two rows. Keywords and keyboard shortcut are now on separate lines inside the card, avoiding the cramped single-row layout.
• Benchmark — Wakeword: "Run wakeword benchmark" button moved from the bottom of the settings pane to the top of the results pane; pane divider adjusted from 390 → 340 px. The button is now always visible without scrolling and sits logically above the results it produces.

[2.03.38] - 2026-06-10

Fixed

• STT Engines and Wakeword no longer have horizontal scrollbars. Root cause: Gtk.Entry widgets compute natural width from placeholder text (e.g. "http://localhost:8010/v1 · realtime: http://localhost:8006/v1" ≈ 500 px). Without set_width_chars(1) the entry cannot shrink below its natural width even when placed in an expanding container. Added set_width_chars(1) to all entry-creating helpers: _entry(), _url_field(), ModelPicker, _kw_shortcut_row, and _sound_field. Also added set_max_width_chars(50) to the stt_result wrapping label.

[2.03.37] - 2026-06-10

Fixed

• STT Engines page no longer appears empty. _refresh_status() called _stt_commit() / _llm_commit() and accessed stt_dot / llm_dot unconditionally; if the STT page was opened before the LLM page was built (lazy), the builder crashed silently with AttributeError. Added hasattr guards so each section is only committed / updated when its widgets exist.
• Wakeword page no longer causes horizontal scrollbar. The ww_status label (showing model list like "7 models loaded: okay_nabu, hey_jarvis…") had no width limit and expanded the page. Added set_max_width_chars(30) and set_ellipsize(END).
• Benchmark STT engine list no longer causes horizontal scrollbar. sel_sw used NEVER horizontal policy, propagating long engine-name labels (~800 px) up through the paned. Changed to AUTOMATIC so content scrolls internally.
• General page and LLM Engines no longer cause horizontal scrollbar. _combo() and _type_combo() lacked set_size_request(10, -1), so ComboBoxText widgets (e.g. long microphone device names) could not shrink below their natural width. Added the size request to both helpers.

[2.03.36] - 2026-06-10

Changed

• STT Engines split from LLM Engines. The single "STT Engines" sidebar page is now two pages — "STT Engines" (speech-to-text configuration) and "LLM Engines" (language model / rewrite configuration) — each with its own infobox. The underlying _stt_section() and _llm_section() methods are unchanged.

[2.03.35] - 2026-06-10

Fixed

• Settings pages no longer widen the dialog. _switch_row description labels had set_line_wrap(True) but no set_max_width_chars, so GTK computed their natural width as the full un-wrapped text (87 chars × ~8 px = ~700 px). With NEVER horizontal policy on the page ScrolledWindow, that propagated directly to the dialog width, making Keyboard, Wakeword, STT Engines, and Benchmark pages ~1000–1360 px wide. Fixed by adding set_max_width_chars(50) (≈ 375 px) to description labels, and changed the page ScrolledWindow horizontal policy from NEVER to AUTOMATIC as a safety net for any other wide widget.

[2.03.34] - 2026-06-10

Fixed

• Settings window no longer grows wide or tall when switching pages. Stack.set_homogeneous(True) was causing the Stack to request the maximum natural size of all its children (both width and height), so pages like Benchmark — STT (wide TreeView) inflated the dialog to 1000+ px wide for every other page. Reverted to False; the dialog now stays at its default 860 × 700 and each page scrolls if its content is taller than the window. Also removed the erroneous NEVER/NEVER ScrolledWindow policy on the two benchmark pages that was propagating natural TreeView width to the Stack.

[2.03.33] - 2026-06-10

Fixed

• Settings window no longer resizes when switching pages. Added Gtk.Stack.set_homogeneous(True) so the dialog always allocates the maximum page height, preventing the window from growing or shrinking as pages are visited.
• Benchmark — Wakeword: "Engines to test" section no longer hidden. The paned divider position was raised from 260 to 390 px so all TTS config fields, the engine checkboxes, wakeword model selector, sample count, and run button are fully visible without scrolling. Both benchmark pages also disable the page-level ScrolledWindow so the paned correctly fills the viewport height rather than expanding past it.

[2.03.32] - 2026-06-10

Changed

• Settings dialog navigation redesigned. Replaced the Gtk.Notebook tab bar with a 170 px left sidebar (Gtk.ListBox of flat buttons with section headers) and a Gtk.Stack for the content area. The dialog is now 860 × 700 px by default. Lazy-loading is preserved: each page is built only on first visit.
• Input page split into Keyboard and Wakeword. The former "Input" tab is now two separate pages — "Keyboard" (input mode, hotkeys, quality gate, audio cues) and "Wakeword" (enable switch, mic level, test button, silence timeout, cancel/send words, engine preset selector, engine config card, wakeword sound cues). Either page may be visited first; the mic level-meter starts on whichever is opened.
• Benchmark page split into Benchmark — STT and Benchmark — Wakeword. The single "Benchmark" tab is now two dedicated pages. All field names and collect logic are unchanged.

[2.03.31] - 2026-06-10

Added

• First-run setup wizard. A paged GTK dialog (setup_wizard.py) guides new users through five steps: trigger method (keyboard / wakeword / both), keyboard shortcut assignment (with live key capture), wakeword server configuration (with connection test), speech-to-text engine selection (local Whisper model size or remote API), and optional AI rewriting (LLM endpoint + model). Navigation has Back, Next, and Skip buttons. The wizard shows automatically on first launch (before the daemon starts) and can be reopened via the "Setup Wizard…" button in the Settings header bar. Completing the wizard sets setup_complete = true in the config so it does not reappear.

[2.03.30] - 2026-06-10

Added

• Dedicated wakeword models for cancel and send. Two new optional fields in the wakeword settings card — "Cancel model" and "Send model" — let you assign a specific wakeword model (e.g. a custom "stop" or "send it" ONNX model) to each action. When configured, a WakewordActionListener opens a second Wyoming connection during recording and fires the action the instant the model triggers — no Whisper pass, no silence timer. The Whisper-based cancel watcher from v2.03.29 remains as a fallback when no cancel wakeword model is set. Model dropdowns are populated from the same server fetch as the trigger model.

[2.03.29] - 2026-06-10

Changed

• Cancel keywords now fire immediately during wakeword recording. A real-time _CancelWatcher accumulates raw PCM from the VAD level-meter, then every ~0.6 s of new audio runs a fast beam_size=1 local transcription pass to check for cancel keywords. When one is found it calls cancel_dictation() instantly — no waiting for the silence timer or a full transcription of the whole clip. Falls back to the existing post-transcription check if no local transcriber is loaded or no cancel keywords are configured.

[2.03.28] - 2026-06-10

Fixed

• Dropdowns no longer change on accidental scroll. All ComboBoxText widgets in the settings dialog now swallow scroll events so hovering over a combo and scrolling doesn't silently change the selected value.

[2.03.27] - 2026-06-10

Added

• Overlay × cancel button. A small × button appears in the top-right corner of the on-screen waveform HUD while recording or streaming. Clicking it cancels the current dictation. The rest of the overlay remains fully click-through; only the button area receives pointer events.
• Cancel/Send keyboard shortcuts in Wakeword tab. The "Cancel words" and "Send words" rows in the Input → Wakeword section now include an inline shortcut entry + "Set" button, so you can configure key_cancel / key_send right next to the spoken-word equivalents without visiting the keyboard-mode card.

[2.03.26] - 2026-06-10

Fixed

• Cancel key now works during wakeword-triggered recording. Previously the ModifierScheme state machine stayed in "idle" when the wakeword fired (it bypasses the key-press path), so the cancel hotkey was silently ignored. It now checks daemon.is_recording as a fallback so it fires regardless of how recording started.

Added

• "✕ Cancel recording" in the tray menu. Always visible; grayed out when idle, enabled as soon as recording starts (wakeword or manual). The primary escape hatch when the wakeword fires on audiobook / TV audio and spoken cancel words can't be heard over the background audio.

[2.03.25] - 2026-06-10

Changed

• Smart Save — no restart popup anymore. "Save" now diffs the changed settings against what requires a daemon restart. If only safe settings changed (language, sounds, LLM prompt, keywords, overlay, …) it shows "✓ Settings applied" inline in the header bar for 4 s and closes the dialog. If restart-required fields changed (STT engine, hotkeys, microphone, wakeword server) it shows "⚠ Saved — restart needed for: …" and highlights "Save & Restart" so you can act on it. No modal popups.

[2.03.24] - 2026-06-10

Fixed

• Input level meter works without visiting General first. The level meter was only started inside _build_general() and referenced mic_level unconditionally. If Input was opened first the meter never started. Now _build_input() also starts the meter when it isn't running yet, and both level bars (mic_level in General and ww_mic_level in Input) are updated defensively via hasattr so either tab can be visited in any order.

[2.03.23] - 2026-06-10

Fixed

• Wakeword results table actually resizable. The controls pane is now wrapped in a ScrolledWindow with shrink=True, so dragging the divider upward collapses the controls and expands the table freely.

[2.03.22] - 2026-06-10

Changed

• Wakeword benchmark uses a split pane. The TTS config / engine selector controls sit in the top pane; the results table sits in the bottom pane. Drag the divider to give the table as much vertical space as needed.

[2.03.21] - 2026-06-10

Added

• Wakeword results table: sortable columns. Click any column header to sort ascending/descending. Numeric columns (Detected, Total, Recall %, False fires, Time) sort numerically.
• Wakeword results table: CSV export. "Copy as CSV" copies the table to the clipboard; "Save CSV…" opens a file chooser to write a .csv file.

[2.03.20] - 2026-06-10

Added

• Wakeword benchmark results table. Results are now shown in a TreeView with one row per engine per voice: Engine | Wakeword | Voice | Detected | Total | Recall % | False fires | Time. Rows are colour-coded green/orange/red by recall. An aggregate "ALL (N voices)" row is appended per engine.

Fixed

• Section header icons now vertically centred with the headline text. The .bt-section CSS class was inadvertently applied to the icon widget, giving it a 14 px top margin and pushing it down. The image no longer receives that class; a set_pixel_size(14) pin ensures consistent sizing.

[2.03.19] - 2026-06-10

Added

• Wakeword engine checkboxes in benchmark. A row of checkboxes above the "Run wakeword benchmark" button lets you pick which engines to include. All are checked by default.
• Wakeword model selector in benchmark. A "Wakeword" combo lets you override which wakeword phrase (model) to test. Leave empty for the default (each engine uses its own configured model). Pick a specific model (e.g. okay_computer) to test that phrase on every selected engine.

[2.03.18] - 2026-06-10

Fixed

• TTS model dropdown no longer floods with voice names. Servers like Kokoro expose each voice as a /models entry. The ⟳ button now detects this case and skips filling the model combo, prompting the user to type the model id manually (e.g. kokoro). The status line shows "type model id manually" as a hint.

Changed

• Wakeword benchmark runs across all engines and shows per-engine results. Previously a callback signature mismatch caused the benchmark to crash when more than one engine was configured. Now progress shows [1/3] engine name, and the results panel lists Recall / False fires / time per engine.

[2.03.17] - 2026-06-10

Added

• Wakeword model fetch feedback. The ⟳ button now shows a status line while connecting; after loading it reports how many models were found (with their names) or "Unreachable" if the server is down.
• Wakeword Quickstart covers all four ports. The Quickstart menu now lists presets for ports 10400–10403, plus hey_jarvis and alexa variants.
• Wakeword info box. An info banner explains how wyoming-openwakeword works, where to put model files, and lists the common built-in models.

[2.03.16] - 2026-06-10

Added

• MP3/OGG/FLAC support for sound cues. The sound file picker now accepts WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC, M4A, AAC, AIFF, and Opus. Playback uses ffplay or gst-play-1.0 as a universal fallback when the native pw-play/paplay can't handle the format.
• Browse dialog with auto-preview. The 📁 browse button opens a FileChooserDialog; selecting a file auto-plays it so you can hear it before confirming. The ▶ play button still works on the current selection.

[2.03.15] - 2026-06-10

Added

• Wakeword engine CRUD. The wakeword server section now has the same full management UI as STT engines: a named-preset selector combo, + Add, Quickstart (with 4 common wyoming-openwakeword templates), ⟳ reload, and Delete. Existing users are migrated: their wakeword_uri / wakeword_model become the first preset automatically.

[2.03.14] - 2026-06-10

Fixed

• Engines tab. Removed the "Internal engine — device & precision" section header. The Device and Compute type fields already only appear when a local engine type is selected; the separate header was redundant.

[2.03.13] - 2026-06-10

Changed

• Settings header bar. Save and Save & Restart moved from the bottom button bar into the title bar (GTK HeaderBar). The X button closes without saving. Bottom button row removed.
• Section icon alignment. Icons in section headers are now vertically centred with the label text (SMALL_TOOLBAR size, valign=CENTER).

[2.03.12] - 2026-06-10

Added

• Icons in settings. All tab labels (Presets, Engines, Input, General, Benchmark, Log, Manual, About) and every section header inside each tab now show a small GTK symbolic icon, making the layout easier to scan.

Fixed

• Resize grip position. The grip indicator now appears correctly at the bottom-right corner below the notebook, not misplaced in the tab bar.

[2.03.11] - 2026-06-09

Added

• Resize grip indicator. A dotted SE-corner grip is drawn over the bottom-right of the settings window so users discover it is resizable.

[2.03.10] - 2026-06-09

Fixed

• Server RAM probe. Prometheus /metrics is almost always at the server root (http://host:port/metrics), not under /v1. Now tries the root URL first before falling back to the API base path.

[2.03.09] - 2026-06-09

Added

• Server RAM in benchmark. For remote/Docker STT engines the benchmark now probes the server's Prometheus /metrics endpoint for process_resident_memory_bytes (standard Python/Go exporter) or container_memory_rss (cAdvisor) and shows the server-side RSS in MB in the RAM column. Falls back to server when the endpoint is not exposed.

[2.03.08] - 2026-06-09

Fixed

• Engines tab layout. The "Internal engine — device & precision" section is now hidden when a remote (Server) or streaming engine type is selected — removing the confusing whitespace gap and irrelevant device controls for non-local engines.

[2.03.01] - 2026-06-09

Added

• RAM usage column in benchmark. The results table now shows a RAM (MB) column — the increase in process RSS while the transcription ran. For local models this captures the memory cost of loading the model on first use; for remote engines it shows — (work happens server-side). Values are measured via /proc/self/status (VmRSS), so they reflect actual resident memory, not virtual address space.

[2.03.00] - 2026-06-09

Fixed

• "Not responding" / system instability on Save. _collect() was calling socket.create_connection() synchronously on the GTK main thread when wakeword is enabled — freezing the UI for up to 1.5 s (longer if DNS is slow). The check is now done on a daemon thread and the result is logged instead of blocking the save path.
• GTK thread-safety crash in wakeword model load. _ww_load() read self.ww_uri.get_text() from inside a background thread — unsafe. The URI is now captured on the main thread before the thread is spawned.
• HTTP 404 with WhisperX and other non-standard endpoints. The remote transcription call always appended /audio/transcriptions to the base URL, but services like WhisperX use /transcribe as the full path. The URL path is now inspected: if it is anything other than empty / /v1 / /v1.0, the URL is used as the complete endpoint with nothing appended — so http://host:8081/transcribe works out of the box.
• Log levels. logbuffer now stores (timestamp, level, message) tuples and accepts a level= keyword (DEBUG / INFO / WARNING / ERROR). The Log tab gains a Level dropdown (Verbose · Info · Warning · Error) that filters the displayed entries live. Wakeword and socket errors are now tagged WARNING; library records are forwarded at their native level.

Added

• Wakeword server preset dropdown (Input → Hands-free wakeword). A Server preset combo lists all configured wakeword server engines by name. Picking one auto-fills the URI and model fields and re-probes reachability. The selection is persisted as wakeword_active in config.

[2.02.03] - 2026-06-09

Added

• Wakeword server preset dropdown in Input tab.

[2.02.02] - 2026-06-09

Fixed

• License tab now renders with markdown styling.
• Benchmark pane minimum height (320 px, shrink=False) prevents the engine list or results table from collapsing to zero when the window is small.

[2.02.01] - 2026-06-09

Added

• Last benchmark time and accuracy shown on the selected STT engine in the Engines tab. Persisted to config so it survives restarts.

[2.02.00] - 2026-06-09

Added

• Language metadata in benchmark. The engine checkbox list shows supported language codes next to each engine (fetched async). Filter box searches by language code. Results table has a Lang column. Data comes from the /v1/models language field (faster-whisper-server) or NVIDIA NIM /metadata.

[1.9.5] - 2026-06-09

Added

• Emoji picker search. A search field at the top of the emoji picker filters all categories in real time using Unicode character names (e.g. "fire", "dog", "heart"). Typing hides the category bar and shows matching results; clearing restores the category view.

Fixed

• Manual tab now shows content. MANUAL.md is copied next to the package module so the Manual tab finds it in both venv and deb installs.
• Info banner no longer bright blue. The .bt-infobox background now uses a neutral 5 % tint of the foreground colour instead of the theme accent colour, so text stays readable on any theme.

[1.9.4] - 2026-06-09

Changed

• Settings UI completely redesigned. All six settings tabs (Presets, Engines, Input, General, Input, General) now use a card-based layout following GTK3 best practices: related fields are grouped inside visually distinct cards with bold section titles. CSS is injected at start-up to give cards a consistent rounded border (boxed-list + bt-card) and a styled info banner at the top of each tab.
• Dialog is larger (740×700 px) and every tab scrolls. The notebook pages now wrap their content in a Gtk.ScrolledWindow so no fields are ever clipped, even on small screens.
• Engines toolbar reorganised. Creation actions (+ Add, + Stream, Quickstart) are left-aligned; destructive/status actions (Delete, Test, ⟳) are right-aligned via pack_end, making the bar scannable at a glance.
• Section titles replace plain separators. The old Gtk.Separator + unstyled Gtk.Label pattern is gone; every section now has a small, dimmed, bold all-caps header rendered with markup.
• Cleaner section names. "WW - Wakeword (Hands-free)" → "Hands-free wakeword"; "Audio cues (manual dictation)" → "Audio cues (keyboard / hotkey dictation)"; "Local engine … device & precision" → "Internal engine — device & precision".

[1.9.3] - 2026-06-09

Added

• ⓘ info buttons on every settings field. Each field in every tab now has a small information icon that opens a plain-language help popover when clicked — so non-technical users can understand what each setting does without hovering or reading the manual.
• Manual tab in Settings. A new "Manual" tab shows the full MANUAL.md reference doc directly inside the Settings window.
• Quickstart templates for engines. A "Quickstart ▾" button in the STT and LLM engine toolbars opens a menu of common services (OpenAI, Groq, OpenRouter, Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM, llama-swap, faster-whisper-server, NVIDIA Riva) and pre-fills the form — one click to configure a provider.

Changed

• Engine type names are now human-readable. STT types now read "Internal — faster-whisper, runs inside the app", "Server — OpenAI-compatible API (LAN or cloud)", and "Realtime — NVIDIA Riva / NIM streaming" instead of the raw identifiers. LLM types read "LAN server — runs on your machine or local network" and "Cloud service — OpenAI, Groq, OpenRouter, …".
• Device selector now shows "GPU (CUDA)" instead of "cuda", and compute types have plain-language descriptions (e.g. "int8 — fast, less memory").

[1.9.2] - 2026-06-09

Added

• Emoji picker for preset icons. The "Icon (emoji)" field in Settings → Presets now has a 😀 button that opens a scrollable emoji grid (60 common emojis across six categories). Click any emoji to insert it — or keep typing directly into the field as before.

[1.9.1] - 2026-06-08

Changed

• Settings opens instantly. Each tab's contents are now built the first time you view it instead of all up front, so the dialog no longer pauses ~1.3s constructing the file-choosers in the Input/Benchmark tabs. Saving force-builds any tab you didn't visit first, so no field is ever missed.
• Connection dots moved beside their field. The Wakeword and TTS reachability dots now sit just left of the URL entry (matching the Engines tab) instead of at the far right of the row.

Fixed

• Settings could be opened more than once. Choosing Settings while it's already open now raises the existing window instead of stacking a second copy.

[1.9.0] - 2026-06-08

Added

• Connection indicators for remote endpoints. The Wakeword engine field (Input tab — renamed from "Wyoming URI" to read more generally) and the TTS URL field (Benchmark tab) now show a coloured dot: green when the server is reachable, red when it's configured but unreachable, grey when blank — mirroring the STT/LLM engine dots. It's a lightweight background TCP probe, refreshed when the dialog opens, when you press ⟳, and when you leave the field.

[1.8.1] - 2026-06-08

Fixed

• Settings dialog and control panel wouldn't open on some desktops. When the gvfs org.gtk.vfs.UDisks2VolumeMonitor dbus service fails to activate (common on headless or minimal sessions), every Gtk.FileChooserButton blocked ~25s on a StartServiceByName timeout while realizing — so the Settings dialog never finished appearing, and the stalled GTK main loop froze the panel too. Blitztext now selects GIO's native /proc/mounts volume monitor (GIO_USE_VOLUME_MONITOR=unix) before any window is realized, so file choosers open instantly with no dbus dependency.

[1.8.0] - 2026-06-08

Added

• Send by voice: say a distinctive phrase like "computer send" at the start or end of a clip and the word is stripped, then the rest is typed and submitted with Enter — the spoken equivalent of "stop + paste + Enter". Mainly for hands-free use, where you can't press a key. Configure under Settings → Input → "Send words", or [routing] send_keywords. Off by default; because it presses Enter, use a multi-word phrase (e.g. your wakeword + "send") so a sentence that merely ends in "send" doesn't submit by accident. Matched the same edge-anchored, ASR-tolerant way as routing/cancel keywords.
• Wakeword benchmark (Settings → Benchmark): stress-test hands-free detection. It synthesizes short sentences with your wake phrase spoken in random voices (plus pure-filler utterances with none), streams them to your wyoming-openwakeword server, and reports recall (how reliably it fires), false fires, and a per-voice breakdown. Speech comes from any OpenAI-compatible TTS server (Kokoro-FastAPI, XTTS, OpenAI, …): set its URL, optional API-key env var, model, and voices under the new [tts] config / the Benchmark tab, and use Connect to test it (it auto-fills the voice list when the server exposes one).

[1.7.1] - 2026-06-08

Fixed

• Overlay waveform and silence countdown ring never appeared on systems where PortAudio/sounddevice can't open the default input — notably PipeWire boxes, where opening an input stream simply hangs. Both the live waveform and the auto-stop countdown are driven by a single level meter, which was the only part of the app still using sounddevice (everything else records via pw-record). The meter now streams raw PCM from the same system recorder as the WAV recorder (pw-record/parecord/arecord) and computes the level itself, so it works wherever recording works — on both the hotkey and hands-free (wakeword) paths, plus the mic-level preview in Settings. No more PortAudio dependency for metering.
• App reported itself as "__main__.py" in the taskbar and in GNOME's "… is not responding" dialog. Launched via python -m blitztext, GTK's default program name is argv[0]'s basename. It now sets prgname/application name to Blitztext before any window is realized (and the desktop file gains StartupWMClass=blitztext for the .desktop match + icon), without touching the -m blitztext entry point.

[1.7.0] - 2026-06-07

Added

• Spoken cancel keyword: say a word like "abbrechen" (or "cancel") at the start or end of a clip and the whole dictation is discarded — it is never routed, rewritten, or typed anywhere. Mainly rescues an accidentally triggered (e.g. wakeword) recording. Configure under Settings → Mic/Cues → "Cancel words", or [routing] cancel_keywords (default ["abbrechen", "cancel"]; empty list disables it). Matched the same edge-anchored, ASR-tolerant way as routing keywords, so the word buried mid-sentence won't trip it.

[1.6.0] - 2026-06-07

Fixed

• Session freeze when the overlay's caret tracking was active (could lock up the whole GNOME/X11 desktop, forcing a logout/reboot). The AT-SPI caret tracker subscribed to the high-frequency object:text-caret-moved signal and made synchronous, blocking AT-SPI reads from inside the event handler — which re-enters the accessibility dispatcher and is stormed by the app's own xdotool typing (one event per character), congesting the a11y bus until the desktop stopped responding. It now tracks focus changes only and reads the caret rectangle lazily (once, when the overlay shows), never from inside an event dispatch.

Changed

• Matched preset is fused into the overlay instead of a desktop notification: when voice routing picks a preset, the overlay shows its emoji icon, name, and the spoken keyword on a banner, and narrates the phase ("Transcribing…" → "Rewriting…"). With the overlay on, the redundant per-dictation notifications are suppressed (errors still notify); headless/overlay-off keeps notifications.

Added

• Live LLM rewrite in the overlay: rewrite presets now stream the model's output into the bubble token-by-token, so you watch it write. The delivered text is still the complete result, typed once the rewrite finishes.

1.5.1 - 2026-06-07

Added

• Silence auto-stop countdown ring on the dictation overlay: when you stop speaking, a full circle wrapping the microphone glyph drains clockwise as the trailing-silence timer runs out, recolouring from calm cyan to an urgent red and emptying exactly as the recording auto-stops. It spans the configured "Silence to stop (s)" window ([wakeword] silence_seconds), fades back in/out as you pause and resume, and so finally makes the hands-free auto-stop visible instead of a silent surprise.

1.5.0 - 2026-06-07

Added

• On-screen dictation overlay (Settings → General → "Visual overlay", or [general] overlay_enabled, default on): the moment recording starts — by hotkey or wakeword — a translucent bubble appears at the cursor showing a pulsing microphone, a live waveform of your mic level, and the recognised text (word-by-word with a realtime streaming STT engine, or the final result as a brief confirmation otherwise). Its tail points at where the text will land: it follows the text caret when the focused app exposes it over accessibility (AT-SPI), otherwise the mouse pointer, otherwise a screen corner — tune via [general] overlay_anchor = "caret" | "pointer" | "corner". The window is click-through and never takes focus, and it finally gives hands-free wakeword sessions visible feedback (their notifications are suppressed by design). X11 only; falls back to a corner where the cursor can't be located.

Changed

• Presets are speakable by name: voice routing now matches a preset's name as an implicit keyword, so a preset works by voice even with no keywords configured (e.g. just say "nicer email …"). Explicit keywords still take precedence, and preset names also bias the STT for better recognition.
• General settings switches moved to the far right of each row, each with an inline description so it's clear what the toggle does without hovering.
• About: added a "Copyright: 2026 mARTin Bierschenk - Design" line.

[1.4.0] - 2026-06-07

Added

• "Announce matched preset" notification (Settings → General, or [general] notify_routing, default on): after a voice command, a notification shows which preset and spoken keyword matched — shown even for hands-free wakeword sessions, so you can see what you triggered. It only fires on a real match, so it never spams when nothing is said.
• Per-preset emoji icon (Presets → "Icon (emoji)"): give each preset a distinct emoji, shown in the matched-preset notification so you can tell at a glance which fired.

Fixed

• Voice-routing default went to a rewrite: when no [routing] default preset is set, the no-keyword fallback used the first preset — which, if that happened to be an LLM rewrite (e.g. "Improve text"), sent every unrouted wakeword command to the language model (and failed when the LLM was down). The fallback now prefers a transcribe preset, so the default action is plain transcription.

[1.3.0] - 2026-06-07

Added

• Pause wakeword (tray): a reversible "Pause wakeword" toggle appears in the system-tray menu when the wakeword is enabled. It pauses/resumes hands-free detection by toggling the /tmp/wake_muted flag (external scripts may toggle the same file).
• "Play audio cues" switch (Settings → Input → Audio cues, or [sounds] enabled): on/off for the manual (keyboard/hotkey) start/stop chimes. Defaults to on. The hands-free wakeword sounds are independent of it.
• Configurable wakeword auto-stop silence (Settings → Input → Hands-free → "Silence to stop (s)", or [wakeword] silence_seconds): end a hands-free recording this many seconds after you stop speaking. Defaults to 2.0 (previously hard-coded to 2.5 s).

Fixed

• Wakeword sounds silenced by the manual cue switch: the "Play audio cues" master switch wrongly muted the hands-free Sound: detected/captured cues too. Wakeword cues are now independent — they play whenever a file is set and stay silent when cleared (no surprise system-chime fallback), regardless of the manual switch.
• PortAudio/ALSA teardown noise: the level meter no longer leaks pthread_join ... failed / PaUnixThread_Terminate ... failed lines to the terminal when a clip ends — that C-library chatter (written straight to fd 2) is now suppressed around the stream open/close.
• Wakeword stuck muted: a leftover /tmp/wake_muted flag silently disabled detection with no in-app way to clear it. The state is now exposed and reversible from the tray, so a stale flag no longer kills hands-free use. The daemon also logs a clear Starting PAUSED warning when it boots muted.
• Away-from-keyboard "Busy" storm: a wakeword hit arriving while the previous clip was still transcribing went through toggle() and popped a "Busy" notification. Wakeword triggers now go straight to start_dictation(), so a busy/not-ready state is ignored silently instead.
• Quiet hands-free errors: transcription/rewrite failures during a wakeword-triggered session no longer raise critical desktop notifications — they are logged instead, keeping background sessions silent.
• Notification storm / lock-screen pile-up: desktop notifications are now sent as transient with a short expiry and reuse a single bubble, so they no longer stack in the notification log or persist on the lock screen.
• Quiet hands-free sessions: per-dictation notifications are suppressed for wakeword-triggered sessions (audio cues are used instead).

[1.2.0] - 2026-06-05

Added

• Wyoming Wakeword Support: Complete hands-free integration via Wyoming protocol (e.g., openWakeWord), with live configuration testing and model fetching in the UI.
• ATK Screen Reader Accessibility: Fully mapped GTK labels, inputs, tooltips, and properties to the ATK bridge, enabling seamless navigation for blind users via screen readers like Orca.
• Drag-and-Drop Workflow Ordering: Workflows in the main tray menu can now be reordered via native drag-and-drop.
• Voice Activity Detection (VAD) Auto-Stop: Dictation now automatically stops after detecting 2.5 seconds of silence, removing the need to manually click Stop.
• Audio Feedback: Added audible start/stop/cancel chimes mapping to system-native alert sounds.
• Benchmark Autocomplete: The Benchmark UI automatically fills in the reference .txt transcript if it matches the selected audio file.
• Realtime STT streaming mode: new mode = "stream" workflow support and a riva_realtime STT engine for Riva/NIM WebSocket transcription, including a Settings shortcut for Nemotron ASR Streaming on http://127.0.0.1:8006/v1.
• Settings About tab with the app version, source link, changelog, and license text.
• STT & LLM engine manager: add, rename, and delete engine presets, each with an online/offline status dot, a per-engine type (local/cloud), and a searchable model dropdown populated from the server's /models (with a reload button). Local Whisper device/precision now live with the STT engine.
• Benchmark tab: run a reference clip through every STT engine and compare time, case-sensitive accuracy (WER), and a CPU/GPU/remote device column, with the fastest and most accurate highlighted.
• Custom audio cues: pick your own WAV files to play when recording starts and stops (covers stop+paste, stop+paste+Enter, and silence auto-stop), each with play-test and clear-to-default buttons. Built-in system sounds otherwise.
• Settings Log tab: a live activity log (model load/download, transcriptions, errors) with Copy and Clear, so a long "Loading…" is no longer opaque.
• Per-tab info boxes and expanded tooltips across Settings, written in plain language and exposed to screen readers (ATK) — for non-technical and blind users (barrierefrei).
• Click-to-bind hotkeys: a Set button captures the next keypress (including modifier-only chords like Ctrl+Win) into any hotkey field.

Changed

• GUI rebuilt in GTK 3 (replacing tkinter): a native GNOME panel unified with the tray, with the Ubuntu font and a dropdown+editor pattern in Settings.
• Voice-keyword routing and a modifier hotkey scheme (Ctrl+Win start, Ctrl stop+paste, Alt stop+paste+Enter, Esc cancel) replace per-preset combos as the default way to dictate.
• Quality gate rejects silent/too-short clips and stock Whisper hallucinations before they reach the screen.

1.1.0 - 2026-06-04

Added

• Debian package (packaging/build-deb.sh) producing an installable blitztext_<ver>_arm64.deb with a desktop entry, app icon, and a blitztext launcher. Installs via the Software app or apt install ./…deb. Bundles a relocatable venv with all Python deps (no pip/network at install) and declares system deps (python3-gi, xdotool, libnotify-bin, a recorder) so they pull in automatically. The bundled venv is built on the system /usr/bin/python3, so the tray works out of the box.

Notes

• python3-gi is already present on a standard Ubuntu GNOME install; the tray only seemed unavailable from source when the project venv was built from a non-system Python (e.g. conda/miniforge). The .deb avoids this entirely.

1.0.1 - 2026-06-03

Changed

• Redesigned the control-panel window: minimal flat layout, Ubuntu font throughout, clickable workflow rows with hover (click to record / stop), subtle dividers, and text-style Settings/Quit actions. Dropped the monogram avatars and per-row buttons in favour of a cleaner, simpler look. The Settings window picks up the same font and styling.

1.0.0 - 2026-06-03

First release of the Linux port. The upstream project is a macOS-only menu-bar app (Swift/SwiftUI, CoreML/WhisperKit) that cannot run on Linux or in a container; this is a native host tool that reproduces the workflow — focus any text field, press a hotkey, speak, and the (optionally rewritten) text is typed into that field.

Added

• Native dictation engine (daemon.py): global hotkeys via pynput, each hotkey toggles record → transcribe → optional rewrite → deliver.
• Local transcription via faster-whisper (transcribe.py); device="auto" tries CUDA and falls back to CPU int8 (CPU-only on this arm64 host).
• Microphone recording (recorder.py) through pw-record / parecord / arecord — 16 kHz mono WAV, no Python audio bindings required.
• Optional LLM rewrite (rewrite.py) against any OpenAI-compatible endpoint (OpenAI, or a local vLLM / llama-swap), configurable per workflow.
• Typing into the focused window via xdotool (paste.py): type directly or paste through the clipboard; re-activates the target window first.
• Configurable workflows (config.py) in ~/.config/blitztext/config.toml, with five defaults (Transcribe, Nicer email, Improve text, Calm down, Add emojis), per-workflow prompt/model/temperature overrides, and a TOML writer.
• Control-panel window (gui.py, tkinter): workflow rows with monogram avatars, hotkey badges, per-row Record buttons, a live status dot, and a Settings window that edits config and can Save & Restart.
• System-tray mode (tray.py, AppIndicator): macOS-menu-bar-style status icon with a menu to trigger each workflow, Show panel, Settings…, and Quit; shares one daemon/model/hotkey set with the window. Falls back to the window with an install hint when PyGObject is absent.
• CLI (__main__.py): tray (default), gui, run, transcribe, config-path, and --version.
• Packaging: install.sh (venv with --system-site-packages), requirements.txt, and a blitztext.service systemd user unit.

Notes

• Targets an X11 session (uses xdotool); Wayland would need ydotool/wtype.
• System tray requires a one-time sudo apt install python3-gi (the GTK / AppIndicator typelibs and GNOME ubuntu-appindicators extension are already present on the target host).