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Voice clips

Hold F2, say your message, and let go. What you said is typed into the message box, so you can fix it before you press Enter. The Voice Clip button by the message box does the same while you hold it down.

Tools > Voice clips... changes the shortcut, and lets you press it once to start and again to stop instead of holding it. A shortcut is one of the F keys, or a key with Ctrl, ⌥ or ⌘.

Send the message as soon as I stop talking, in the same place, sends what you said without waiting for Enter. Anything already in the message box is sent with it. Left off, your words are only typed.

Your voice is turned into text on your computer by whisper.cpp. The recording never leaves it.

Set it up on Mac. Install whisper.cpp and download a model:

brew install whisper-cpp
curl -L --fail --create-dirs -o "$HOME/Library/Application Support/buddylist/whisper/ggml-base.en.bin" https://huggingface.co/ggerganov/whisper.cpp/resolve/main/ggml-base.en.bin

On Windows and Linux, install or build whisper.cpp for your system and put whisper-cli on your PATH, or set BUDDYLIST_WHISPER_CLI to its full executable path. Put the model in whisper/ inside the app's data folder, or set BUDDYLIST_WHISPER_MODEL to its full path.

Neither is bundled, because a model alone is about 150 MB. ggml-base.en.bin is English only. The other models understand more languages; the bigger ones are more accurate and slower.

  • The app finds whisper-cli on your PATH; set BUDDYLIST_WHISPER_CLI to use a different one.
  • It uses the ggml-*.bin file in that whisper folder, the first by name if there are several. Set BUDDYLIST_WHISPER_MODEL to use a model kept somewhere else.
  • On Mac, macOS asks for microphone access the first time you record. Allow it, then hold F2 again.

Good to know:

  • On a Mac keyboard F2 is fn+F2, unless your F keys are set to work as standard function keys.
  • Wait for "Recording" in the status bar before you talk. The microphone is only on while you hold the key.
  • Esc throws the clip away. So does switching to another window while you hold the shortcut; a clip you started with a press carries on.
  • A tap does nothing, and a clip stops by itself after two minutes.
  • Actions > Record a voice clip records until you press the shortcut, whichever way it is set.
  • The browser preview has no microphone: it types a sample sentence instead.