Start at login¶

This page describes Dictum 0.5.

With start at login on, Dictum's desktop app starts when you log in. It sits in the tray, and nothing opens on screen. The app starts the daemon, which loads the speech model in the background, so your first dictation is not slower than the others. When Whisper runs on the graphics card, the loaded model stays in the card's memory, but Dictum does no work on the card until you dictate.

In the setup wizard¶

Step 5 of the setup wizard asks Start Dictum at login?

Yes, start at login (marked recommended) is chosen on a first setup.
No, I'll start it myself leaves your login as it is.

Dictum writes the login entry at the end of the wizard, after it saves your settings. If that fails, the last step says "Start at login could not be set: …" with the reason, and the rest of the setup stands. Where Dictum cannot start at login, the step says "Starting at login is not available on this system."

In Settings¶

Open Settings → General.
Turn Start Dictum at login on or off.

The change applies at once. If Dictum cannot write the entry, the reason appears under the switch: "The login item could not be changed: …". The Settings reference describes the rest of the General page.

The switch shows On only when the desktop app is registered. If only the daemon is registered (see The daemon alone), it shows Off, and turning it on replaces the daemon's entry with the desktop app's.

What Dictum registers¶

Windows 11Linux

Dictum adds a value named Dictum under your user's Run key, HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. Its data is the full path of dictum-gui.exe. This needs no administrator rights and affects only your account.

To see it, run this in PowerShell or the Command Prompt:

reg query HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run /v Dictum

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
    Dictum    REG_SZ    "C:\Users\you\AppData\Local\Programs\Dictum\dictum-gui.exe"

Turn start at login off in Dictum, not in Task Manager's startup list. Dictum reads only the Run key, so after Task Manager disables the entry, Dictum's switch still shows On.

Uninstalling Dictum in Settings → Apps removes the value. If you unzipped Dictum instead of installing the MSI, the value points into the folder you unzipped it to, so keep Dictum there.

Dictum writes an XDG autostart entry, ~/.config/autostart/dictum.desktop (under $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/autostart when that variable is set). KDE Plasma, GNOME and the other desktops that follow the XDG autostart standard start it when you log in:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Dictum
Comment=Voice to text
Exec="/home/you/.local/lib/dictum/dictum-gui"
Icon=audio-input-microphone
Terminal=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

Exec is the full path of dictum-gui, or of the AppImage when Dictum runs from one. To see the entry:

cat ~/.config/autostart/dictum.desktop

The tarball's uninstall.sh removes it.

The daemon alone¶

On a computer where you use Dictum only from the terminal, without the tray app, register the daemon instead:

dictum daemon --install-autostart

It prints where it wrote the entry, then "The daemon will start at your next login."

Windows 11Linux

The same Dictum value in the Run key then holds "C:\Users\you\AppData\Local\Programs\Dictum\dictum.exe" daemon. dictum.exe is a console program, so Windows opens a console window for it at login. Closing that window stops the daemon.

Dictum writes a systemd user unit, ~/.config/systemd/user/dictum.service, and enables it. It starts with your graphical session, which KDE Plasma 6 and GNOME provide, and restarts 3 seconds after a crash:

[Unit]
Description=Dictum voice-to-text daemon
PartOf=graphical-session.target
After=graphical-session.target

[Service]
ExecStart="/home/you/.local/lib/dictum/dictum" daemon
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=3

[Install]
WantedBy=graphical-session.target

To start it now without logging out, and to see its state and output:

systemctl --user start dictum.service
systemctl --user status dictum.service
journalctl --user -u dictum.service

Only one Dictum login entry exists at a time. --install-autostart replaces the desktop app's entry, and turning Start Dictum at login on in Settings replaces the daemon's.

To stop starting Dictum at login, whichever entry it has:

dictum daemon --uninstall-autostart

It prints "Dictum no longer starts at login."

dictum init, the setup in the terminal, also asks "Start Dictum when you log in?" It registers the desktop app when dictum-gui sits next to dictum, and the daemon alone otherwise. dictum init --autostart answers yes without asking.

Note

On Windows, the MSI does not put dictum on PATH. In PowerShell, run it by its full path: & "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\Dictum\dictum.exe" daemon --install-autostart. In the AppImage, put dictum after the file name, as shown below.

Keep an AppImage's path fixed¶

The login entry records the AppImage's full path. If you move or rename the file, or it sits in a folder you clean, such as Downloads, Dictum does not start at login. Give it a permanent place and a name without a version:

Make a folder for it and move the AppImage there:

mkdir -p ~/Applications
mv ~/Downloads/dictum-<version>-linux-x64.AppImage ~/Applications/Dictum.AppImage
chmod +x ~/Applications/Dictum.AppImage

Start Dictum from its new place:
```
~/Applications/Dictum.AppImage
```
Turn on start at login, in the setup wizard or in Settings → General. The entry now runs "/home/you/Applications/Dictum.AppImage".

To register the daemon alone from the AppImage, put dictum after the file name:

~/Applications/Dictum.AppImage dictum daemon --install-autostart

To update, quit Dictum (Quit Dictum in the tray menu), replace ~/Applications/Dictum.AppImage with the new file under the same name, make it executable, and start it again. Update and remove has the details.

If you moved the AppImage after turning start at login on, start it from its new place, then turn Start Dictum at login off and on again in Settings → General. Dictum writes the entry again with the new path.

dictum init warns you when Dictum runs from Downloads or a temporary folder: warning: Dictum runs from /home/you/Downloads; login start breaks if that folder is moved or cleaned. Move Dictum to a permanent folder first.

Before you delete the AppImage, turn start at login off.