Hearsay

Phone hears.PC types.

Press Ctrl+Alt+Space, talk to Rambler on your Android phone, press again: the cleaned-up text is pasted where you're typing.

Fast enough to forget it's there

Hearsay wakes the phone, opens a text field and presses Gboard's mic key for you. Measured on a Pixel 9: listening 1.9 seconds after the first press, from a dozing phone, and the text pasted 0.7 to 1.0 seconds after the second.

First press to listening

1.9s

Second press to pasted text, at most

1.0s

Press, talk, press

First, press Ctrl+Alt+Space.

The Hearsay window on your computer
The Hearsay window's status card: Ready. Press Ctrl Alt Space anywhere to dictate.

Then talk to the phone on your desk.

What you say

Hey Sam, um, so I'll send the invoice on Thursday. Actually no, uh, before Friday. Is that okay?

What Rambler writes on the phone
Hearsay · Gboard
Hey Sam, I'll send the invoice before Friday. Is that okay?

Press it again. The text lands where you were typing.

Re: March invoiceSend
To: Sam Okafor
From: you

Hey Sam, I'll send the invoice before Friday. Is that okay?

On Mon, Sam wrote: Any update on the March invoice?

Any app, any text box: an email, a chat, a terminal. With paste off in Settings, the text waits on the clipboard instead.

Inside the window

One window sets it up, then Hearsay waits in the tray. These are screenshots of it.

The hotkey recorder showing the keys Ctrl, Alt and Space
Your own hotkeyRecord any combination in Settings.
Lives in the trayStart, stop and cancel from its menu.
The status card while listening: Talk to your phone. Press again to paste.
Status at a glanceWhether the phone answers, the hotkey, and the last error if there was one.
The pairing code 482 913, shown on both the computer and the phone
Paired, then encryptedSix digits on both screens. The phone answers only computers it's paired with.
The keyboard picker listing Gboard and Pixelboard
The right keyboardSwitches to Gboard to dictate, then back to yours.
Settings: Paste the text, and Start at login, both switched on
Paste or only copy, start at loginWith paste off, the text waits on the clipboard.

What you need

The phone

  • Android 14 or newertested on Pixel 9
  • Rambler in GboardGboard › Voice typing
  • The same Wi-Fi as the computernot guest or hotel

The computer

  • Windows 10 or 11x86-64 · WebView2
  • Linuxx86-64 · GTK 4, WebKitGTK 6.0
  • macOSbuilds from source, untested

Not yet

  • A Play Store listinginstall the APK yourself
  • Signed computer buildsWindows says unknown publisher
  • A global hotkey on Waylanda desktop shortcut instead
  • More than one phonea new pairing replaces the old
  • Dictating over the internetsame network only

Hearsay finds Gboard's mic key by its internal ID, so a Gboard update can stop dictation from starting until Hearsay catches up.

Questions

Is Hearsay made by Google?

No. Rambler is Google's voice typing in Gboard. Hearsay is an independent, open-source project that drives it from your computer, and isn't affiliated with Google.

Does Hearsay hear me?

No. Gboard does the listening, on the phone. Hearsay presses its mic key, waits for the finished text and sends it to your computer.

What goes over the network?

The start and stop signals and the finished text, over your own Wi-Fi, encrypted, between the phone and the computer you paired it with. Nothing goes through a server.

Can the phone stay locked?

Yes. Leave it on the desk, locked if you like. You talk to it; you don't need to touch it.

Why isn't it on the Play Store?

Not yet. You install the app from the release page, which means turning Play Protect off for the install and allowing a restricted setting for the key presser. The setup window walks you through both.

Dictation stopped starting. Now what?

Gboard probably moved its mic key. Run hearsay diagnose and attach the file to an issue. It holds Gboard's key names and positions, never anything you said.

Leave the phone
on the desk.

Free and open source under MIT. Version 0.3.0 for Windows and Linux; macOS builds from source.

Download latest