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

[2.03.13] - 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).