Vocalinux v0.15.0

TL;DR:

Vocalinux 0.15.0 is a stable minor release on the 0.14 packaging line. Settings move to a searchable sidebar with dictation controls in the footer. GitHub Releases ship AppImages. The speech-language list is much larger (Hungarian included). Continuous dictation capitalizes sentences and leaves a space between utterances. There are new power and GPU controls, better Wayland IBus when ibus-wayland is present, and a fix for Bluetooth mic crashes during PortAudio probing.

Highlights

New Features

• Settings: searchable sidebar instead of seven notebook tabs. (#601 by @jatinkrmalik)
• Settings: recognition status, mic level, Test Dictation, and Close live in the sidebar footer so they stay visible while you change pages. (#618 by @jatinkrmalik)
• Packaging: AppImage for x86_64 and aarch64, plus smoke-test packaging fixes. (#573, #602 by @jatinkrmalik)
• Languages: expand the speech catalog (Hungarian and many more). CLI --language uses the same list as Settings. Official Alphacephei VOSK models are wired where they exist; Whisper-only languages stay out of the VOSK dropdown. (#616 by @jatinkrmalik, fixes #565)
• Dictation: capitalize at the start and after sentence-ending punctuation. (#554 by @jatinkrmalik, closes #553)
• Dictation: append a trailing space after each completed transcription so the next session does not glue onto the previous sentence. (#608 by @jatinkrmalik, fixes #605)
• Auto-pause competing apps and idle model keep-alive unload. (#592 by @jatinkrmalik, closes #445, #591)
• Vulkan: auto-select a discrete GPU and allow a manual device in Advanced settings. (#590 by @jatinkrmalik, closes #589)
• Wayland: use IBus when ibus-wayland is running, including on compositors previously treated as unbridged. (#614 by @eiseleb47, closes #607)
• CLI: vocalinux --version. (#563 by @AnayGarodia, closes #555)
• Website: marketing redesign and a languages page with honest per-engine badges. (#582, #616 by @jatinkrmalik)

Bug Fixes

• Settings: Custom Shortcut entry / Record / Set show again after the sidebar settings refactor. (#619 by @jatinkrmalik)
• Languages: English (India) (en-in) maps to Whisper code en for whisper.cpp / Whisper / remote API. VOSK still uses en-in. (#617 by @jatinkrmalik)
• Audio: stop Bluetooth mic probing from corrupting the heap. One PortAudio open per capture session, stop-before-close, and no stereo probe on mono-only devices. Fixes crashes on SCO/HFP headsets such as PipeWire “Bluetooth internal capture”. (#599 by @jatinkrmalik, fixes #567 reported by @HaleTom)
• IBus: keep engine teardown correct when parent do_destroy fails. (#613 by @eiseleb47, fixes #606)
• Settings UI: flatten info notices so helper text matches the rest of the dialog. (#615 by @jatinkrmalik)
• KDE Plasma Wayland: skip unbridged IBus when ibus-wayland is not present so injection does not fail quietly. (#577 by @jatinkrmalik, fixes #574)
• xdotool: keep input focus after injection. (#564 by @AnayGarodia, fixes #549)
• Uninstall: remove the IBus data dir, stop the app via PID file, and remove ~/.local/bin launchers reliably. (#597 by @jatinkrmalik, #569 by @webenefits)
• Installer: install both libgirepository 1.0 and 2.0 when the distro has them. (#583 by @jatinkrmalik, fixes #571)
• AUR: depend on virtual python-pywhispercpp; move clipboard and wtype tools to optdepends. (#579 by @Asseel-Naji, #586 by @jatinkrmalik)
• UI: first-run dialog response without Gtk.Dialog.do_response. (#580 by @jatinkrmalik, fixes #566)
• Vosk: add Italian and English-India rows to the medium/large model tables. (#551 by @AnayGarodia, fixes #550)
• Docs: fix ydotool service setup guidance. (#560 by @AnayGarodia, fixes #557)

Docs / maintenance

• Multi-distro tray icon FAQ. (#584)
• robots.txt no longer blocks indexable pages. (#610)
• Website CI lint / action warning cleanup. (#611)
• README badge layout tweaks. (#542, #544, #545)
• Next.js dependency bump. (#587)

Thanks

Thank you @eiseleb47 for the IBus teardown fix and for teaching Vocalinux about ibus-wayland (#613, #614).

Thank you @AnayGarodia for --version, the xdotool focus fix, the Vosk model table entries, and the ydotool docs correction (#563, #564, #551, #560).

Thank you @webenefits for making uninstall remove the ~/.local/bin wrappers (#569).

Thank you @Asseel-Naji for the AUR python-pywhispercpp dependency fix (#579).

Thank you @HaleTom for reporting the Bluetooth mic malloc crash (#567).

Thanks to everyone who filed bugs and feature requests on the way to 0.15 and to everyone who tested builds.

Install / Upgrade

Recommended (install.sh)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jatinkrmalik/vocalinux/main/install.sh -o /tmp/vl.sh && bash /tmp/vl.sh

AppImage

Download Vocalinux-0.15.0-x86_64.AppImage or Vocalinux-0.15.0-aarch64.AppImage from this release:

chmod +x Vocalinux-0.15.0-x86_64.AppImage
./Vocalinux-0.15.0-x86_64.AppImage

Host text-injection tools (xdotool, wtype, or ydotool) are still required, same as a PyPI install. FUSE is needed to run the AppImage on most hosts.

Arch Linux (AUR)

yay -S vocalinux

PyPI

pip install -U vocalinux

Flatpak

Local build notes live under packaging/flatpak/. Flathub may still trail this tag.

Upgrade details: docs/UPDATE.md

Full changelog: v0.14.2...v0.15.0