Eloquent Notes is a Linux system tray app, inspired by Google Eloquent, that turns voice dictations into well-structured, well-ordered notes. Press a shortcut, speak, press it again: a local Gemma 4 model (via Ollama) transcribes the audio, rewrites it as clean prose with a title, classifies it and tags it. Each note is saved as a plain Markdown file, and a notes window lets you browse, search, edit and extend them.
Everything runs offline on your machine.
- One-gesture capture: left-click the tray icon or bind
eloquent-notes toggleto a global shortcut. A floating HUD shows the elapsed recording time while you speak. - Clean notes, not transcripts: a four-phase pipeline (transcription → rewriting → classification → tagging) removes filler words, writes a concise title, classifies the note type (
note,task,idea,reminder,question,decision) and generates 2–5 tags. - Plain Markdown files: one file per note with YAML frontmatter, in a folder you choose. No database, no lock-in.
- Notes window: a timeline grouped by day, type and tag filters, and a reader where title, type, tags and body are editable.
- Add dictation: dictate more text into an existing note; it is rewritten and appended as a new paragraph.
- Semantic search: search notes by meaning with a local embedding model (
embeddinggemma-2:latest). Embeddings are computed on demand and cached. - Light & dark themes: sober, native-feeling palettes that follow your desktop's light or dark color scheme and switch live.
- Multilingual: dictate in any language and pick the output language for titles, prose and tags.
- Customizable prompts: every pipeline phase is driven by editable Markdown prompts.
-
Ollama with a Gemma 4 model and an embedding model:
ollama pull gemma4:e4b-it-qat ollama pull embeddinggemma-2:latest
[!NOTE] Gemma 4 audio models accept clips of up to 30 seconds, so recordings longer than 30 seconds are automatically split at natural pauses with Silero VAD.
-
PortAudio (audio capture and beeps) and a desktop notification server:
# Ubuntu / Debian / Pop!_OS sudo apt install libportaudio2 -
Python 3.11+.
uv tool install git+https://github.com/arrase/eloquent-notes.git
# or
pipx install git+https://github.com/arrase/eloquent-notes.gitgit clone https://github.com/arrase/eloquent-notes.git
cd eloquent-notes
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"eloquent-notes & # start the tray daemon (or open the notes window if it is already running)
eloquent-notes install-autostart # start it automatically on login- Start recording: left-click the tray icon or run
eloquent-notes toggle. A beep plays, the icon turns red, and a floating recording HUD appears at the top of the screen. - Speak for as long as you need. The model is preloaded in the background while you talk.
- Stop recording the same way (or click the floating HUD). The icon turns orange while the note is written.
- A Note Saved notification appears and the icon returns to gray. Click the notification to open the notes window. Silent recordings produce a Dictation Empty notification and no note.
| Action | Effect |
|---|---|
| Left click | Start / stop recording |
| Middle click | Show / hide the notes window |
| Right click | Menu: Start/Stop Recording, Open Notes, Configuration, Reload Configuration, Quit |
Open it with a middle click on the tray icon, Open Notes in the menu, or eloquent-notes open. The window automatically adapts to your desktop's dark or light theme.
- Timeline: notes grouped by day (Today, Yesterday, "Monday, 19 October", …), newest first.
- Filters: type chips (All, Notes, Tasks, Ideas, …) and a tag selector. Clicking a
#tagon a card selects it. - Search: type a query and press Enter to search by meaning. Clearing the box returns to the timeline.
- Reader: click a card to open it. Title, type, tags (comma separated) and body are editable and saved when you leave the reader or close the window. Esc goes back.
- Add dictation records a new dictation and appends its rewritten text to the note, keeping its type and tags.
- Copy copies the note as Markdown (
# Title+ body) to the clipboard. - Delete asks for confirmation and moves the file to the system trash.
| Dark Theme | Light Theme |
|---|---|
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Bind eloquent-notes toggle in your desktop environment:
- GNOME: Settings → Keyboard → View and Customise Shortcuts → Custom Shortcuts → +. Command:
eloquent-notes toggle. - KDE Plasma: System Settings → Shortcuts → Add New → Global Shortcut → Command/URL. Command:
eloquent-notes toggle. - i3 / Sway:
bindsym $mod+Ctrl+n exec --no-startup-id eloquent-notes toggle
Each note is a Markdown file in the notes folder (default ~/Documents/Eloquent Notes), named YYYY-MM-DD HHMMSS Title.md:
---
title: Redis cache for Postgres
created: '2026-10-19T09:42:17+02:00'
type: idea
tags:
- redis
- caching
- performance
---
Consider using Redis as a caching layer to avoid hitting Postgres directly on slow queries.- The timestamp prefix keeps file names unique and chronological; editing a title never renames the file.
- Files without valid frontmatter (
title,created, a knowntype) are ignored, so the folder can live inside an Obsidian vault or any other Markdown collection. - Files edited outside the app are picked up the next time the window refreshes; their embeddings are recomputed on the next search.
On first run, Eloquent Notes creates ~/.config/eloquent-notes/ with config.yaml and the prompt files.
Open it from the tray menu (Configuration), the Settings button in the notes window, or eloquent-notes config. Saving reloads the running daemon.
- General: autostart on login, logging level, log rotation, view the log file.
- Notes: the notes folder.
- Appearance: timeline grid columns and custom badge colors for each note type.
- AI Settings: Ollama URL, audio model, output language, context length, keep-alive, retries and timeouts; Semantic Search group with the embedding model and minimum similarity. Refresh lists the audio-capable and embedding models installed in Ollama.
- Audio: channels, recording HUD, beeps.
- Prompts: edit the transcription, rewriting, classification, tagging and retry prompts.
notes:
folder: "~/Documents/Eloquent Notes" # One Markdown file per voice note.
columns: 2 # Number of columns in the timeline grid.
type_colors:
note: "#64748B"
task: "#3B76B6"
idea: "#C27821"
reminder: "#C94A4D"
question: "#8258B8"
decision: "#2A8567"
ai:
ollama_url: "http://localhost:11434"
model: "gemma4:e4b-it-qat"
output_language: "English" # Output language for rewritten notes, titles, and tags.
context_length: 8192 # If null or not set, the maximum allowed by the model is used.
keep_alive: "0" # Time to keep model loaded after note generation (e.g. "5m", "10m", or "0" to unload immediately).
preload_keep_alive: "5m" # Time to keep model weights loaded in VRAM during recording to reduce note generation time.
max_retries: 3 # Number of times to retry LLM execution if the output is not valid JSON.
preload_timeout: 180 # Timeout in seconds for preloading the model weights.
request_timeout: 300 # Timeout in seconds for note generation requests.
search:
embedding_model: "embeddinggemma-2:latest"
keep_alive: "5m" # Time to keep the embedding model loaded between searches.
min_similarity: 0.6 # Hide search results below this cosine similarity.
audio:
channels: 1
recording_hud_enabled: true
beep_frequency: 440
beep_duration: 0.1
beep_enabled: true
logging:
level: "INFO"
max_mb: 5
backup_count: 3Prompts live in ~/.config/eloquent-notes/prompts/:
transcription_system.md,transcription_user.md— Phase 1: audio to clean text.rewriting_system.md,rewriting_user.md— Phase 2: title and note prose.classification_system.md,classification_user.md— Phase 3: note type.tagging_system.md,tagging_user.md— Phase 4: topic tags.retry_prompt.md— correction sent when a response is not valid JSON.
| Command | Effect |
|---|---|
eloquent-notes |
Start the tray daemon; if it is already running, open the notes window. |
eloquent-notes toggle (-t, --toggle) |
Start / stop recording (starts the daemon if needed). |
eloquent-notes open |
Open the notes window (starts the daemon if needed). |
eloquent-notes config |
Open the configuration dialog. |
eloquent-notes install-autostart |
Install ~/.config/autostart/eloquent-notes.desktop and the desktop launcher entry. |
eloquent-notes --version |
Print the installed version. |
Logs are written to $XDG_STATE_HOME/eloquent-notes/app.log (default ~/.local/state/eloquent-notes/app.log) with rotation. The embedding cache lives at $XDG_CACHE_HOME/eloquent-notes/embeddings.npz.
Full documentation, including architecture and pipeline details: https://arrase.github.io/eloquent-notes/