Voice Wake & Push-to-Talk

Updated: 2025-12-08 · Owners: mac app

Modes

Wake-word mode (default): always-on Speech recognizer waits for trigger tokens (swabbleTriggerWords). On match it starts capture, shows the overlay with partial text, and auto-sends after silence.
Push-to-talk (Cmd+Fn): hold Cmd+Fn to capture immediately—no trigger needed. The overlay appears while held; releasing finalizes and forwards after a short delay so you can tweak text.

Speech recognizer lives in VoiceWakeRuntime.
Silence windows: 2.0s when speech is flowing, 5.0s if only the trigger was heard.
Hard stop: 120s to prevent runaway sessions.
Debounce between sessions: 350ms.
Overlay is driven via VoiceWakeOverlayController with committed/volatile coloring.
After send, recognizer restarts cleanly to listen for the next trigger.

Hotkey detection uses a global .flagsChanged monitor: Fn is keyCode 63 and flagged via .function; Command is keyCode 55/54. We only observe events (no swallowing).
Capture pipeline lives in VoicePushToTalk: starts Speech immediately, streams partials to the overlay, and calls VoiceWakeForwarder on release.
When push-to-talk starts we pause the wake-word runtime to avoid dueling audio taps; it restarts automatically after release.
Permissions: requires Microphone + Speech. macOS will prompt the first time; seeing events needs Accessibility approval.
Fn caveat: some external keyboards don’t expose Fn; fall back to a standard shortcut if needed.

Voice Wake toggle: enables wake-word runtime.
Hold Cmd+Fn to talk: enables the push-to-talk monitor. Disabled on macOS < 26.
Language & mic pickers, live level meter, trigger-word table, tester, forward target/command all remain unchanged.

VoiceWakeForwarder.prefixedTranscript(_:) prepends the machine hint before sending. Shared between wake-word and push-to-talk paths.

Toggle push-to-talk on, hold Cmd+Fn, speak, release: overlay should show partials then send.
While holding, menu-bar ears should stay enlarged (uses triggerVoiceEars(ttl:nil)); they drop after release.