WayType is a small desktop utility for Linux Wayland sessions. It records the microphone, sends the audio to an OpenAI-compatible speech endpoint, and types the result back as keystrokes.

Unashamedly vibe-coded. Inspired by Handy.

Features

• A global hotkey that works while another app has focus.
• Tap the hotkey to start and stop, or hold it down to talk.
• Transcription through any endpoint that speaks the OpenAI /v1/audio/transcriptions API.
• An optional second pass through a text model to clean up the transcript before it gets typed.
• Text is injected through the XDG Desktop Portal.
• A history of past dictations with optional recording playback.
• Update checks against GitHub Releases, with an in-place install when you accept one.
• Light and dark themes that follow the system color scheme.

Quick Start

Install as a .NET tool

Requires the .NET 10 runtime.

dotnet tool install --global waytype
waytype

To update or remove it later:

dotnet tool update --global waytype
dotnet tool uninstall --global waytype

Download from GitHub Releases

Grab waytype-x64 from the latest release. It is a self-contained single file, so no .NET install is needed.

mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
curl -L -o ~/.local/bin/waytype \
  https://github.com/bitbound/WayType/releases/latest/download/waytype-x64
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/waytype
waytype

Make sure ~/.local/bin is on your PATH.

Once WayType is running, open Settings, fill in the sections below, then press your hotkey and start talking.

Requirements

• A Linux session running Wayland.
• PipeWire, or PulseAudio, for microphone capture.
• xdg-desktop-portal with a backend that implements the GlobalShortcuts and RemoteDesktop interfaces. KDE Plasma and GNOME both provide these.

WayType uses the portals for both halves of the job. GlobalShortcuts registers the dictation hotkey, and RemoteDesktop types the transcript into the focused window. It does not read input devices directly and does not need root.

Setup

Add WayType to the application menu

Open Settings → Create application shortcut to add WayType to your desktop environment's application menu.

Grant text input permission

Settings → Text input permission → Grant permission. The portal shows a dialog that asks you to allow remote desktop input. WayType saves the restore token, so you are not asked again on every launch. If the permission is revoked later, click Re-check and grant it again.

Choose a speech endpoint

Settings → Speech to text. Any OpenAI-compatible service works. Set the endpoint, the API key, and the model id. The endpoint placeholder suggests Lemonade at http://localhost:13305/v1. Click the refresh button next to the model field to pull the list from /v1/models.

Single-model servers that serve one transcription model chosen at startup and expose no /v1/models listing (for example parakeet.cpp in its container form) work too. Untick This server lists its models (/v1/models) and the model field disappears, no model is required, and none is sent.

Pick a hotkey

Settings → Dictation → Set shortcut. Press the combination you want. The default is Ctrl+Alt+Space. The trigger mode decides the behavior.

• Tap starts dictation on one press and stops it on the next.
• Press records only while the key is held down.

Tune recording

Also under Settings → Dictation.

Setting	What it does
Microphone	Capture device. Refresh rescans what the audio server exposes.
Max recording seconds	Hard stop for a single take.
Silence threshold	Below this level the take ends early. Raise it if background noise keeps a recording alive.
Typing delay	Pause between injected keys. Raise it if an app drops characters, since very low values can type nothing at all.

Optional post-processing

Settings → Post-processing sends the raw transcript through a chat model before typing it. This helps with punctuation, capitalization, and filler words. It takes its own endpoint, key, and model, so you can run a small local model for cleanup and keep the speech endpoint somewhere else.

Files and Logs

Path	Contents
~/.config/waytype/settings.json	Settings
~/.config/waytype/prompts.json	Post-processing prompts
~/.config/waytype/remotedesktop-restore-token	Portal grant token, owner-readable only
~/.local/share/waytype/history.json	Dictation history
~/.local/share/waytype/audio/	Saved recordings

If something misbehaves, turn on Settings → Diagnostics → Write debug logs, reproduce the problem, then use Open log file.

Building from Source

Requires the .NET 10 SDK.

dotnet build WayType.slnx
dotnet run --project WayType/WayType.csproj

To produce the same self-contained binary that the release workflow ships:

dotnet publish WayType/WayType.csproj --configuration Release --runtime linux-x64

Run the tests with:

dotnet run --project tests/WayType.Tests/WayType.Tests.csproj

License

WayType is licensed under the GPL-3.0.