fcitx5-vinput

Voice input for Fcitx5 — local and cloud ASR, LLM rewriting, cross-distro packages

English | 中文 | Documentation

demo.mp4

Features

• Two trigger modes — tap to toggle recording, or hold to push-to-talk
• Local & cloud ASR — offline sherpa-onnx models or cloud providers (Doubao, Aliyun Bailian, ElevenLabs, OpenAI-compatible), switchable at runtime from the command palette (Shift_R → /asr)
• LLM post-processing — error correction, formatting, translation via scenes
• Command mode — select text, speak an instruction, release to apply
• GUI & CLI — vinput-gui for quick setup, vinput CLI for full control
• Cross-distro — Arch, Fedora, Ubuntu/Debian, Nix, Flatpak

Installation

Arch Linux (archlinuxcn / AUR)

If you use the archlinuxcn repository, install the repo-built package:

sudo pacman -S fcitx5-vinput

The AUR binary package is also available:

# Full version (with local sherpa-onnx runtime)
yay -S fcitx5-vinput-bin

# Lite version (cloud-only, zero local ONNX runtime)
yay -S fcitx5-vinput-lite-bin

Fedora (COPR)

sudo dnf copr enable xifan/fcitx5-vinput-bin

# Full version (with local sherpa-onnx runtime)
sudo dnf install fcitx5-vinput

# Lite version (cloud-only, zero local ONNX runtime)
sudo dnf install fcitx5-vinput-lite

Ubuntu 24.04 (PPA)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xifan233/ppa
sudo apt update

# Full version (with local sherpa-onnx runtime)
sudo apt install fcitx5-vinput

# Lite version (cloud-only, zero local ONNX runtime)
sudo apt install fcitx5-vinput-lite

Ubuntu / Debian (manual)

# Download latest .deb from GitHub Releases
# Full version (with local sherpa-onnx runtime):
sudo dpkg -i fcitx5-vinput_*.deb
sudo apt-get install -f

# Lite version (cloud-only, zero local ONNX runtime):
sudo dpkg -i fcitx5-vinput-lite_*.deb
sudo apt-get install -f

Nix (flake)

Supports x86_64-linux and aarch64-linux. Both full and lite packages are cached on Cachix.

inputs.fcitx5-vinput.url = "github:xifan2333/fcitx5-vinput";

# Full version (default):
#   inputs.fcitx5-vinput.packages.${system}.default
# Lite version (cloud-only, zero local ONNX runtime):
#   inputs.fcitx5-vinput.packages.${system}.fcitx5-vinput-lite

Binary cache via Cachix:

nixConfig = {
  extra-substituters = [ "https://fcitx5-vinput.cachix.org" ];
  extra-trusted-public-keys = [ "fcitx5-vinput.cachix.org-1:XpX3AA6+dDIX4qJhb1QM7sbTwX6/qSlGvW8Z5NK6XdU=" ];
};

Full Home Manager example in the install docs.

Flatpak

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists xifan https://xifan2333.github.io/flatpak-auto/xifan.flatpakrepo

# Full version (with local sherpa-onnx runtime)
flatpak install https://xifan2333.github.io/flatpak-auto/refs/org.fcitx.Fcitx5.Addon.Vinput.flatpakref

# Lite version (cloud-only, zero local ONNX runtime)
flatpak install https://xifan2333.github.io/flatpak-auto/refs/org.fcitx.Fcitx5.Addon.Vinput.Lite.flatpakref

After installation, grant the extra permissions and restart Fcitx5:

flatpak override --user --filesystem=xdg-run/pipewire-0 org.fcitx.Fcitx5
flatpak override --user --filesystem=xdg-config/systemd:create org.fcitx.Fcitx5
flatpak override --user --filesystem=xdg-cache org.fcitx.Fcitx5
flatpak kill org.fcitx.Fcitx5

GitHub Releases

Download the package for your system from GitHub Releases (both full and lite variants are provided):

• Debian / Linux Mint / Ubuntu (other): .deb (fcitx5-vinput_*.deb / fcitx5-vinput-lite_*.deb)
• openSUSE / Fedora (other): .rpm (fcitx5-vinput-*.rpm / fcitx5-vinput-lite-*.rpm)
• Arch-based: .pkg.tar.zst (fcitx5-vinput-*.pkg.tar.zst / fcitx5-vinput-lite-*.pkg.tar.zst)
• Flatpak: .flatpak (fcitx5-vinput.flatpak / fcitx5-vinput-lite.flatpak)
• Generic Linux: tar.gz (*_bundled.tar.gz / fcitx5-vinput-lite-*.tar.gz)

Build from source

Dependencies: cmake, fcitx5, pipewire, libcurl, nlohmann-json, CLI11, Qt6

# Full version (with local sherpa-onnx ASR runtime)
sudo bash scripts/build-sherpa-onnx.sh
cmake --preset release-clang-mold
cmake --build --preset release-clang-mold
sudo cmake --install build

# Lite version (pure cloud ASR + LLM, zero sherpa-onnx dependency)
cmake --preset release-clang-mold -DVINPUT_ENABLE_LOCAL_ASR=OFF
cmake --build --preset release-clang-mold
sudo cmake --install build

Building a .deb on a Debian / Ubuntu host

This path packages directly on the host with its own CMake/Ninja toolchain. It uses no container runtime at any point — no Docker, no Podman, no chroot — and produces the same cpack-generated .deb that the release workflow publishes.

Install the build dependencies first (all of them are in the Debian/Ubuntu archives):

sudo apt install -y \
  clang cmake mold ninja-build pkg-config gettext dpkg-dev file \
  curl jq bzip2 \
  libcurl4-openssl-dev libssl-dev libarchive-dev libpipewire-0.3-dev libsystemd-dev \
  libfcitx5core-dev libfcitx5config-dev libfcitx5utils-dev fcitx5-modules-dev \
  libcli11-dev nlohmann-json3-dev \
  qt6-base-dev qt6-tools-dev qt6-tools-dev-tools

If your host already runs a newer libcurl from backports, apt will refuse to install the matching libcurl4-openssl-dev from the stable suite. Install the development package from the same suite instead, e.g. libcurl4-openssl-dev/trixie-backports.

Stage the sherpa-onnx runtime into a local prefix. This is needed for the full build only; skip it for the Lite build. Nothing is installed into /usr, and no sudo is required:

prefix="$HOME/.cache/fcitx5-vinput/sherpa-onnx"
bash scripts/build-sherpa-onnx.sh "" "${prefix}"
export VINPUT_CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH="${prefix}"

If GitHub is not reachable from your host, pre-download sherpa-onnx-v<version>-linux-x64-shared-no-tts.tar.bz2 with any mirror-capable client and pass the archive path as the third argument, e.g. bash scripts/build-sherpa-onnx.sh "" "${prefix}" /path/to/sherpa.tar.bz2. The script still verifies the archive against the upstream digest.

Configure, build, and package. The package version comes from VERSION:

version="$(tr -d '\n' < VERSION)"
cmake --preset release-clang-mold \
  -DVINPUT_ENABLE_LOCAL_ASR=ON \
  -DVINPUT_PROJECT_VERSION="${version}" \
  -DVINPUT_PACKAGE_RELEASE=1 \
  -DVINPUT_PACKAGE_CONTACT="$(git config user.name) <$(git config user.email)>" \
  -DVINPUT_PACKAGE_HOMEPAGE_URL=https://github.com/xifan2333/fcitx5-vinput
cmake --build --preset release-clang-mold
cpack --config build/CPackConfig.cmake -G DEB -B dist

The result is dist/fcitx5-vinput_<version>-1_amd64.deb (the host architecture, amd64 on x86_64). For the Lite build, pass -DVINPUT_ENABLE_LOCAL_ASR=OFF, drop the sherpa-onnx step, and expect dist/fcitx5-vinput-lite_<version>-1_amd64.deb.

The package ships /usr/share/doc/fcitx5-vinput/{copyright,changelog.Debian.gz,changelog.gz}, gzipped man pages and stripped binaries. Policies that the DEB generator does not apply on its own (documentation metadata, man page compression, stripping of the bundled sherpa-onnx libraries, and 0755/0644 permissions) are handled by packaging/cpack/CPackDebianDocs.cmake, a CPACK_PRE_BUILD_SCRIPTS hook that only runs for the DEB generator. The long description comes from packaging/cpack/description.txt and the DEP-5 copyright from packaging/cpack/copyright.

Quick start

systemctl --user enable --now vinput-daemon.service
fcitx5 -r

Open Vinput GUI → Resources → Models → download and activate a model. Then:

• Tap Alt_R — start/stop recording
• Hold Alt_R — push-to-talk

Key bindings

Key	Default	Function
Trigger Key	Alt_R	Tap to toggle recording; hold to push-to-talk
Command Key	Control_R	Hold after selecting text to modify with voice
Command Palette Key	Shift_R	Open unified command palette (/model, /asr, /scene, /proc)

All keys can be customized in Fcitx5 configuration.

Documentation

For ASR configuration, scenes & LLM setup, CLI reference, and registry contribution guide, see the documentation site.

License

GPL-3.0

Contributors

Sponsor

If this project has been helpful to you, feel free to support it.