I installed [Handy](https://github.com/cjpais/Handy), a local speech-to-text app, on Kubuntu. It uses ONNX models (parakeet-tdt) to transcribe speech locally. Getting it to work required fixing a couple of issues, and then I built a small watcher script to pipe transcriptions into a tmux session. ## Fixing the Crash Handy was crashing silently every time I pressed the shortcut to start recording. The log at `~/.local/share/com.pais.handy/logs/handy.log` would just stop dead mid-recording with no error. No segfault in dmesg, no coredump, nothing. The root cause was that `pipewire-alsa` wasn't installed. Handy uses CPAL (a Rust audio library) which goes through ALSA, but without the PipeWire-ALSA bridge, it couldn't route audio and would silently die. Running Handy from a terminal showed the errors: ``` ALSA lib pcm.c:2722:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM pipewire ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1000:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave ``` Fix: ```bash sudo apt install pipewire-alsa ``` After that, the ALSA errors went away and recording worked. ## Push-to-Talk Doesn't Work on KDE Wayland Push-to-talk mode (hold key to record, release to stop) doesn't work properly on KDE Wayland. The key release event fires immediately, so the recording stops before any speech is captured. The log shows `TranscribeAction::start` and `TranscribeAction::stop` in the same second. This is because Handy falls back to a regular window on KDE Wayland (`Skipping GTK layer shell init on KDE Wayland`) and global shortcut key-release detection is unreliable under Wayland's security model. Workaround: use toggle mode instead (`push_to_talk: false`). Press once to start recording, press again to stop. ## Handy Settings In Handy's settings I changed: - **Push to Talk**: disabled (toggle mode, because of the KDE Wayland issue) - **Paste output**: disabled (so it only saves to history, doesn't paste into the focused window) - **Debug mode**: enabled (for the extra logging while troubleshooting) The settings file lives at `~/.local/share/com.pais.handy/settings_store.json`. ## Sending Transcriptions to a Tmux Session I wanted to be able to dictate into a specific terminal without switching focus to it. The idea: keep working in whatever window I'm in, press Ctrl+Space, speak, and have the text appear in a tmux session called "handy". Handy saves every transcription to a SQLite database at `~/.local/share/com.pais.handy/history.db`. The schema is simple: ```sql CREATE TABLE transcription_history ( id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, file_name TEXT NOT NULL, timestamp INTEGER NOT NULL, saved BOOLEAN NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, title TEXT NOT NULL, transcription_text TEXT NOT NULL, post_processed_text TEXT, post_process_prompt TEXT ); ``` I wrote a watcher script at `~/.local/bin/handy-to-tmux` that polls this database for new entries and sends them to the tmux session via `tmux send-keys`. It debounces rapid writes (Handy sometimes writes partial results) so only the final transcription gets sent. Usage: ```bash handy-to-tmux start # start watcher in background handy-to-tmux stop # stop it handy-to-tmux status # check if running handy-to-tmux run # run in foreground for debugging ``` It uses a pidfile at `~/.local/state/handy-to-tmux.pid` to ensure only one instance runs at a time. Logs go to `~/.local/state/handy-to-tmux.log`. The tmux session just needs to exist first: ```bash tmux new-session -d -s handy ``` Then whatever shell is running in that session receives the transcribed text as if it were typed in. ## Targeting Different Tmux Sessions I added the ability to route transcriptions to different tmux sessions using separate keyboard shortcuts. The `target` subcommand sets which session to send to and triggers Handy's recording in one step: ```bash handy-to-tmux target code # sets target to "code" and starts recording handy-to-tmux target chat # sets target to "chat" and starts recording ``` The target persists in `~/.local/state/handy-to-tmux.target` until changed, so subsequent Ctrl+Space presses (without setting a new target) continue going to the same session. Defaults to "handy" if no target is set. To set up per-session shortcuts, bind KDE global shortcuts to: - `Ctrl+Alt+1` → `handy-to-tmux target handy` - `Ctrl+Alt+2` → `handy-to-tmux target code` - etc. Each shortcut starts recording and routes the result to its session. Press Ctrl+Space to stop recording. ## Repo Source is at https://github.com/ThomasBurgess2000/handy-to-tmux. Install with `./install.sh` which copies the script to `~/.local/bin/`. _2.16.2026_