STT - Speech to text

/e/OS Smartphone Operating System Features & Applications
16

it’s not working for me with Anysoft and even if it did, the gboard keyboard would not appear there since it’s installed in Shelter.
I know that the space bar supposed to work with Anysoft and other keyboards but I dunno why it’s not working for me and I also don’t need it currently.

18

Finally Dicio has released a working STT app version of Dicio. :tada:
It is a first version, so don’t expect too much (e.g. there are not punctuation marks), but I find it useful and it save’s me time with dictating text for SMS, chat or notes vs. writing it with the keyboard.

1 Like
19

True. Works quite good for me too.

20

Dicio seems to recognize text well enough. Nice!

I’m a bit lost in this thread… is there some way to trigger Dicio to input text instead of me typing, in any arbitrary app?

I can copy and paste what I say into Dicio, but that’s quite a few taps (see below). I’m looking for something more like what gboard does when you tap on the mic icon (and I’d rather not use gboard).

Right now my “quite a few taps” process is to:

  1. open Dicio
  2. touch the hamburger menu icon
  3. touch “Speech to text service”
  4. say something
  5. touch the copy button, and finally:
  6. paste that text into another app

I tried fiddling with Android OS settings a bunch and was able to set Dicio as the “digital assistant”, but this doesn’t seem to do anything useful.

21

if you use another keyboard app (AnySoftKeyboard) it will recognize the availability of Dicio on microphone-tap. The service will not be instantly available though. System IME integration as voice input (or by intent) is lacking currently.

For both issues there are entries at:

3 Likes
22

My recommendation is Futo for several reasons.

  1. It has an extremely good recognition of language. So most words will be recognized correctly.
  2. It recognises in contrast to Dico capital letters and the punctation and end of sentences.
  3. If you are speaking more than one language it can be set to automatically detect the language. It will recognise and switch to the other language automatically.
  4. Completely offline
  5. No known trackers

https://gitlab.futo.org/alex/voiceinput
https://github.com/futo-org/voice-input

It works well with anysoftkeyboard.

Screenshot_20240104-085534_App_Lounge-01
Screenshot_20240104-085534_App_Lounge-011440×2454 281 KB

7 Likes
23

Interesting topic and information, thank you all!
When activating Futo it says that the app will be able to read all passwords on a site you use it, is that the same for all STT models?
Or shouldnt I worry about it and its even a good sign they tell me?..

1 Like
24

That appears to be the same for every input app (Keyboard, voice app) you may add. Just try to deactivate a keyboard and re-activate it and you’ll see that you’ll get the same message. The app is open source and offline. So no data/passwords should be transferred anyways.

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25

As Lyerbird said, it theoretically shouldn’t be an issue. If you’re worried about it sending data, you can always take away it’s ability to access the internet from the Settings app. I’ve done this with a few privacy invading apps such as Gboard, and the Pixel camera app.

Do know that FUTO apps use a weird pseudo open source license. The code is viewable, but they can take down forks of the project for any reason. Not ideal imo, but certainly better than Gboard.

1 Like
26

The Futo licence an be found here. The do say:

This temporary license is intended to protect our intellectual property while we work towards a more open and permissive license. This license is subject to be replaced with one that will grant you more rights, not less.

which sounds reasonable to me.

1 Like
27

Fair enough. Though noting makes them actually ever replace that license with something better. I’ll choose to withhold my trust until it actually happens.

Won’t stop me from using cool free stuff, just that I wouldn’t build super critical infrastructure on it or contribute to the project myself.

1 Like
28

Wow, FUTO voice input performance is impressive. That’s great, I was stopping by to try to figure out how to get STT from a self-hosted Whisper server because Dicio doesn’t work well for me. But if FUTO (Whisper) works that well right on the device, why not use that?

For folks using FUTO: I’m not seeing any integration with the AOSP keyboard. Are you? I was expecting a mic icon to show up or something. If I use AnySoftKeyboard, I do see a mic icon and that does trigger FUTO STT.

I also asked in their chat: https://chat.futo.org/#narrow/stream/24-general/topic/how.20to.20trigger.20STT.20with.20AOSP.20keyboard

Agreed re: FUTO license. I hope they go with something standard.

More info on the company:

4 Likes
29

Integration with AOSP keyboard is working - you just have to enable the mic icon in the keyboard settings. Go to
Settings - System - Languages and input - On-screen keyboard - Android keyboard (AOSP) - Preferences.
Toggle the Voice input key switch to enable the icon.

3 Likes
30

I’ve installed Futo, activated it and all so, but when I hit the mic in SwiftKey the only option I am offered is to download “Google Voice Search”. I really don’t know what I am overseeing or what else I can try…

31

In this Git issue it is suggested to open Futo at least once after a Android reboot. So, for this test only, you could try to reboot and open Futo once befor you try to use the mic button.

32

Unfortunately this doesn’t change anything. Keeps asking for Google Voice Search.

33

Please also see the Help Menu inside the Futo app. It may have some relevant instructions or hints.
You could try to uninstall and reinstall Futo.

That said, Futo has a Forum and that might be a better place to troubleshoot this issue or you open a new thread in this /e/OS forum.

1 Like
34

I did not really bother about STT, knowingly that most of the common STT applications are using cloud backed for the audio transcription. But now with FUTO’s approach with a local Wisper server and trained speech LLMs is great!

This also works fine for my major use case, for voice querying my private Ollama AI with OpenWebUI front end running on my Home PC, from the mobile.

Edit: Open WebUI is pretty powerful in terms of features. It comes with builtin Wisper support for STT running on the GPU, that works well on the localhost. But, for allowing the mic in the browser to work, requires a HTTPS connection. So, either I have to add a reverse proxy in between or stick with the FUTO Voice Input for the mobile use.

Does anybody know why FUTO Voice Input did not make it to the F-Droid repo?

35

It is in FDroid but you need to add the Repo.
https://app.futo.org/fdroid/repo/

1 Like
36

This more looks like FUTO’s personal repository, that can be added to F-Droid client store app’s PPA.

So, there must have been a reason that FUTO Voice Input did not make it to F-Droid repo or was rejected by them.