This page describes Dictum 0.5.

Profiles¶

A profile is a set of dictation choices with its own hotkey. Dictum starts with one profile, dictate, on Ctrl+Alt+Space. Add more when you dictate in different ways: Ukrainian with clean-up on one hotkey, English without clean-up on another, for example.

You edit profiles in Settings → Profiles. Click the Dictum icon in the tray, or choose Settings in its menu, to open Settings. The Settings reference describes every field.

What a profile holds¶

Field	What it sets
Name	The name the Profiles list shows.
Hotkey	The keys that start this profile. A profile can have none; you then start it from the command line.
Mode	Push to talk or Toggle: see Hold or toggle.
Languages	One language, several with a main one, or Auto: see Languages.
Your words	Names and terms Whisper should spell your way: see Your words and replace rules.
Speech hint	Extra text Whisper sees before your words. Most people leave it empty.
Processing chain	The processors that work on the text, in order: replace rules, an LLM prompt. Empty means the text is pasted as recognised.
Output	Paste into the focused app or Copy to clipboard only.
Paste shortcut	Automatic, `Ctrl+V` or `Ctrl+Shift+V`. Automatic uses `Ctrl+Shift+V` in terminals Dictum recognises.
Speech provider	Which recogniser and model the profile uses, such as Local Whisper · large-v3-turbo-q8_0.

Every profile also has an id, such as dictate. The tray menu and the command line name profiles by their id. Settings gives a profile you add the id profile, then profile-2 and so on, and shows it greyed in the Name box while the name is empty. dictum profiles list prints every id.

The model belongs to the speech provider, so profiles that use the same provider use the same model. To give one profile another model, add a provider with + Local Whisper on the Speech providers page, choose its model there, and pick that provider as the profile's Speech provider.

Hold or toggle¶

Push to talk: Dictum records while you hold the hotkey. Let go, and the text is pasted. This suits short phrases, and it is the default.
Toggle: Press the hotkey once to start, and press it again to stop and paste. You do not have to hold the keys, which suits long dictation.

One dictation runs at a time. While one profile records, the other profiles' hotkeys do nothing.

Two profiles with different hotkeys¶

This example keeps dictate for Ukrainian and English on Ctrl+Alt+Space, and adds a profile for English only, on Ctrl+Alt+E, in Toggle mode, without clean-up.

Open Settings → Profiles.
Select Dictate in the list, then click + New profile. The new profile copies the speech provider and the languages of the selected one. It has no hotkey, no words and an empty processing chain, and it is selected.
In Name, type English.
Click the Hotkey box ("Click, then press keys") and press Ctrl+Alt+E. While the box listens, Dictum pauses its hotkeys. Esc cancels, and Backspace removes the hotkey.
Under Mode, choose Toggle.
Under Languages, choose One, then English in the list.
Leave Processing chain as it is: "No processing: the text is used as recognised."
Wait a moment. Settings saves the profile half a second after your last change, and the running Dictum registers the new hotkey.
Try both. Put the cursor in a text editor:
- hold Ctrl+Alt+Space, say a sentence in Ukrainian, and let go;
- press Ctrl+Alt+E, say a sentence in English, and press Ctrl+Alt+E again.

If the hotkey does not take:

A red line such as Ctrl+Alt+E is already used by another profile means another profile has the same keys. Choose other keys: nothing is saved while a field is red.
"The daemon could not register this hotkey; another app may already use it." means another program holds the keys. Choose other keys, or see Troubleshooting.
On Wayland, the desktop asks you once to allow each new shortcut. Allow it.

To delete a profile, select it and click Delete profile. The last profile cannot be deleted.

Switch profiles in the tray¶

The tray menu lists your profiles under Profile, each by its id with its languages, such as dictate (uk, en). A tick marks the selected profile. Click another one to select it.

The selected profile matters only where no profile is named:

dictum toggle and dictum start without --profile start it. This is how a key you bind to dictum toggle in your desktop's settings picks its profile.
The tray icon's tooltip shows its id and hotkey, such as Dictum · dictate · Ctrl+Alt+Space.

Each profile's own hotkey always starts that profile, whichever one is selected. The choice is not saved: when Dictum starts again, the first profile is selected.

Profiles from the command line¶

Note

On Windows, the MSI does not put dictum on PATH. In PowerShell, run it by its full path, for example & "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\Dictum\dictum.exe" profiles list. In the AppImage, put dictum after the file name: ./dictum-<version>-linux-x64.AppImage dictum profiles list.

List and inspect profiles¶

dictum profiles list

It prints one line per profile: id, hotkey, mode, speech provider, languages and processing chain.

dictate              Ctrl+Alt+Space     PushToTalk  stt=local lang=uk, en pipeline=[cleanup]
profile              Ctrl+Alt+E         Toggle      stt=local lang=en pipeline=[]

dictum profiles show dictate

It prints one profile in full, with its speech provider and each processor:

id:         dictate
name:       Dictate
hotkey:     Ctrl+Alt+Space (PushToTalk)
stt:        local  whisper-local  model=ggml-large-v3-turbo-q8_0.bin runtime=auto vad=true
language:   uk, en
sttPrompt:  -
vocabulary: Avalonia, Nexus5
pipeline:   cleanup
  cleanup          llm, http://localhost:8080/v1 model=local prompt=cleanup
output:     paste

Change a hotkey¶

dictum profiles set-hotkey profile "Ctrl+Alt+E"

It saves the hotkey and prints profile: Ctrl+Alt+E. A running Dictum picks it up at once. Write the keys joined by +: Ctrl, Alt, Shift and Win (also Super or Meta), then one key, such as Space, E, F9 or `. A combination another profile already uses is refused.

Start a dictation with a given profile¶

dictum toggle --profile profile

The first run starts recording with that profile, and the next one stops it and pastes the text. dictum start --profile profile only starts. dictum stop stops the running dictation and pastes, and dictum cancel stops it and throws the recording away; neither needs a profile.

These commands work with any profile, with or without a hotkey. On a desktop where Dictum cannot register hotkeys itself, such as GNOME before version 48, bind a key to dictum toggle --profile <id> in the desktop's keyboard settings.