Dictate into your X11 Linux desktop from your phone

Hold the button on your phone, speak, and your words are typed into the active text box on your X11 desktop.

LibreOffice Writer on Ubuntu with the sentence on the page and the cursor right after it. — The sentence landed in LibreOffice Writer after tapping Deliver while the phone stayed on a desk.

Packaged as a .deb and a portable zip for x86-64 Linux, tested on Ubuntu 22.04 under X11.

Across 4 applications on Ubuntu 22.04.5 under Xorg (gedit, LibreOffice Writer, a Firefox textarea, and the VS Code editor), 5 of 5 sends typed into the phone landed at the cursor in each program.

We ran our Linux tests on Ubuntu 22.04.5 under Xorg with an Android 16 tablet over "Local LAN", using sentences typed into the phone and short synthetic-voice clips played into LibreOffice Writer and gedit.

Phone app during dictation showing words on screen, a timer at 0:04, and a red Release to end button. — Words on the phone show progress, not the final text.

In GNOME Terminal at a bash prompt, 5 of 5 sends landed on the command line with Ctrl+Shift+V and did not press Enter or run a command.

Do not use FlowMic with xterm or the integrated terminal panel inside VS Code on Linux.

What does not work or was not tested

Running FlowMic on the Linux desktop requires X11. Because GNOME and KDE Plasma 6 default to Wayland, pick an Xorg session on your login screen before signing in. Wayland sessions block the desktop app from typing into other windows.
Do not use FlowMic with xterm or the integrated terminal panel inside VS Code on Linux. Both xterm and the VS Code terminal panel receive nothing when you release the button, even though the computer timeline displays "Input sent" with "(unconfirmed)" and the phone displays "Delivered". Inside xterm, the paste chord reaches the shell directly, so the next key you press can be taken literally.
Because X11 gives no read-back from the target window, every Linux send shows "Input sent" with "(unconfirmed)" on the computer and "Delivered" on the phone. "Delivered" means the words reached the computer, not that they were typed into a window, so always check your target window.
Check where your cursor sits before releasing the button, because text goes to whichever window is in front. In 1 observation with our Linux test computer's screen locked by an idle timer, the phone showed "Delivered · not injected · Resend" and nothing was typed. Windows password fields are not refused, while Linux password fields were not tested. If focus shifts, use "Re-inject" on the computer timeline or "Resend" on the phone row.
One component of the project is not public, and Linux has no ARM build.
If you use "Organize", read the output before keeping it. Across 15 spoken passages over "Local LAN", Organize added or changed details in 4 of 15, turning recognized "because the train is a two" into "since the train ride is about two hours". It makes no lists or summaries.

More limits of this kind

Logging into a real Wayland session was impossible during our run, so a real Wayland session remains unmeasured. When the desktop app was told it was in a Wayland session during an X11 run, the phone showed "Input is unavailable in this Wayland session."
Konsole, Alacritty, kitty, terminal programs beyond bash, and other Linux distributions were not tested.
Chrome, Google Docs, Linux password fields, copied images, other phones, and locked phone screens were not tested.
Spoken language has no auto-detection, and no per-language quality numbers are published.
Human voice recognition quality and individual language packs were not measured or scored.

A few common questions

Why does Linux show Input sent (unconfirmed) on the computer after I dictate?

Because X11 gives no read-back from the target window, every Linux send shows "Input sent" with "(unconfirmed)" on the computer and "Delivered" on the phone. "Delivered" means the words reached the computer, not that they were typed into a window, so always check your target window.

Does pasting text from FlowMic overwrite what is on my Linux system clipboard?

FlowMic pastes via the system clipboard and restores your previous text afterward; across all 4 applications on Ubuntu, previously copied text returned to the clipboard after each send. Avoid copying on the computer while a sentence arrives, because a copy made while FlowMic pastes can be lost, an effect measured on Windows.

Download Try it

Tested on FlowMic 0.3.120 on the computer and 0.3.118 on the phone, 6 November 2026.

Some counts come from FlowMic 0.3.119 on 5 November 2026 or noted test builds and were not repeated on 0.3.120.