Speech Note is a Linux desktop application for working with spoken and written material using local speech recognition, speech synthesis and machine translation.
It can turn speech into text, read text aloud and translate text between supported languages while keeping processing on the user’s own computer. Rather than depending on a single recognition or synthesis technology, Speech Note supports a collection of processing engines, allowing users to select models appropriate for their language, hardware and preferred balance between resource use and output quality. Model files are not bundled with the main installation; the application includes a graphical model browser for downloading them when required.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Offline speech-to-text conversion for dictation, note taking and transcription.
- Text-to-speech functionality for reading notes and other entered text aloud.
- Machine translation for converting text between supported languages without a cloud service.
- Voice and text processing takes place locally, preserving privacy and allowing operation without an Internet connection.
- Graphical model browser for downloading and managing processing models.
- Supports whisper.cpp as one of its speech-recognition engines.
- Can use Faster Whisper for accelerated Whisper-based transcription.
- Vosk, Coqui STT and april-asr provide additional speech-recognition backends.
- Speech synthesis engines include eSpeak NG, MBROLA, Piper and RHVoice.
- Also supports neural speech synthesis through engines including Coqui TTS, Mimic 3, WhisperSpeech, Kokoro, Parler-TTS and F5-TTS.
- Bergamot Translator provides offline neural machine translation.
- Supports a broad selection of languages, with availability depending on the selected engine and model.
- Processing models are downloaded separately, avoiding a large mandatory model payload in the base application.
- Combines recognition, translation and synthesis in one note-oriented graphical workflow.
- Different backends let users choose options appropriate for varied processor capabilities and memory limits.
- Distributed for Linux through Flatpak.
- Also developed for the Sailfish OS platform.
Website: github.com/mkiol/dsnote
Support:
Developer: Michal Kosciesza
License: Mozilla Public License 2.0
Speech Note is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Speech Recognition Tools | |
|---|---|
| Whisper | Automatic speech recognition (system trained on 680,000 hours of data |
| whisper.cpp | Run Whisper locally with fast, efficient C/C++ speech recognition |
| Flashlight | Fast, flexible machine learning library written entirely in C++. |
| sherpa-onnx | Offline speech recognition for many platforms and languages |
| Kaldi | C++ toolkit designed for speech recognition researchers. |
| FunASR | Versatile speech recognition toolkit for real-world audio |
| faster-whisper | Faster Whisper transcription with reduced memory use |
| SpeechBrain | All-in-one conversational AI toolkit based on PyTorch |
| Handy | Offline speech-to-text application |
| ESPnet | End-to-End speech processing toolkit |
| PocketSphinx | Lightweight speech recognition for embedded and mobile use |
| deepspeech.pytorch | Implementation of DeepSpeech2 using Baidu Warp-CTC. |
| Epicenter | Transcription application with global speech-to-text functionality |
| Julius | Two-pass large vocabulary continuous speech recognition engine |
| Speech Note | Write notes, transcribe speech, translate text and read content aloud |
| aTrain | Private local transcription of recorded speech through a polished GUI |
| hyprwhspr | Native speech-to-text designed for Arch / Omarchy |
| Vocalinux | Local voice dictation through a clean desktop interface |
| ostt | Open Speech-to-Text |
| Simon | Flexible speech recognition software |
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