Getting Started

Whislin is voice dictation for Linux and macOS, powered by Whisper AI. Press a hotkey, speak naturally, and watch your words appear in any application.

Installation

macOS

Quick Install:

curl -sSL https://download.merton.cz/whislin/install.sh | bash

Manual Download: Download Whislin-latest-arm64.dmg

Requires macOS 11 (Big Sur) or later. Apple Silicon only for now.

Linux

Quick Install (Recommended):

curl -sSL https://download.merton.cz/whislin/install.sh | bash

This auto-detects your distro and installs the appropriate package.

Debian / Ubuntu:

wget https://download.merton.cz/whislin/latest/whislin_latest_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i whislin_latest_amd64.deb

AppImage (Universal):

wget https://download.merton.cz/whislin/latest/Whislin-latest-x86_64.AppImage
chmod +x Whislin-latest-x86_64.AppImage
./Whislin-latest-x86_64.AppImage

Post-Installation

macOS Permissions

On first launch, Whislin will guide you through granting:

  • Accessibility - For typing transcribed text
  • Input Monitoring - For the global hotkey
  • Microphone - For voice recording

Linux Wayland Users

For the best experience on Wayland, enable uinput access:

sudo usermod -aG input $USER

Then log out and back in.

First Run

On first launch, Whislin downloads the base Whisper model (~142 MB). You can download additional models from Settings.

Basic Usage

  1. Press the hotkey to start recording:
    • macOS: ⌘⇧Space
    • Linux: Super+Shift+D
  2. Speak naturally
  3. Press the hotkey again to stop - your words appear in the focused application

Configuration

Configuration location:

  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/whislin/config.toml
  • Linux: ~/.config/whislin/config.toml
[hotkeys]
toggle = "Super+Shift+D"  # Linux
# toggle = "Command+Shift+Space"  # macOS

[audio]
device = "default"

[transcription]
model = "base"
language = "en"

Next Steps

Smart Aliases