Settings

Concepts

Global settings control Vinput’s base runtime environment, independent of ASR engine or scene selection.

Corresponding config:

{
  "global": {
    "default_language": "en",
    "capture_device": "rnnoise_source",
    "duck_output_while_recording": false,
    "duck_output_volume": 0.25
  },
  "asr": {
    "normalize_audio": true,
    "input_gain": 5.0,
    "vad": {
      "enabled": true
    }
  }
}

Capture device

Select the microphone input source. Vinput captures audio via PipeWire — this lists available capture devices on your system.

GUI

In Vinput GUI, select the device on the Control page.

CLI

vinput device list              # List available capture devices
vinput device use <name>        # Set active device

Input gain

input_gain controls the recording volume multiplier. Increase this if your microphone is too quiet for good recognition.

vinput config set /asr/input_gain 5.0

Audio normalization

normalize_audio normalizes the audio signal for more consistent volume levels.

vinput config set /asr/normalize_audio true

VAD (Voice Activity Detection)

VAD detects whether someone is speaking. When enabled, silent segments are filtered out automatically, reducing unnecessary recognition attempts.

vinput config set /asr/vad/enabled true

Optional VAD knobs (offline local ASR only):

vinput config set /asr/vad/threshold 0.45
vinput config set /asr/vad/min_speech_duration 0.15
vinput config set /asr/vad/speech_pad_ms 300

Capture warm path (privacy)

To reduce leading-word dropout after idle, the daemon may keep a connected but inactive PipeWire capture stream for a short grace period after you stop recording. While inactive:

• audio is not copied into recognition buffers
• recording is false
• the stream is destroyed after the idle grace (default 15s)

This is not always-on listening. Environment overrides (user unit):

# Disable stream reuse (legacy destroy/create every start)
Environment=VINPUT_CAPTURE_REUSE=0

# Idle destroy grace in milliseconds (0 = destroy immediately after stop)
Environment=VINPUT_CAPTURE_IDLE_DESTROY_MS=15000

Verify on your machine:

1. Record once, then wait past the grace period without recording.
2. Confirm daemon logs: capture idle grace expired; destroying reusable stream.
3. Optionally inspect PipeWire (pw-top / desktop mic indicator) — after grace, Vinput should not hold an active capture stream.
4. Cold-start metrics: ./scripts/bench-capture-cold-start.sh --since "1 hour ago" (requires VINPUT_DEBUG=1).

Reduce output volume while recording

When duck_output_while_recording is enabled, Vinput lowers the system output volume while recording and restores it afterwards. This helps when you use speakers and a microphone at the same time — for example listening to music while dictating — so that speaker sound leaking into the microphone does not degrade recognition.

duck_output_volume is the fraction of the current output volume kept while recording (0.25 keeps 25%). It is clamped to the 0.0–1.0 range. This feature is off by default.

Volume is adjusted through WirePlumber (wpctl), so it matches the system volume and is fully restored afterwards. If WirePlumber is not available (for example inside some sandboxes), the feature is silently skipped.

vinput config set /global/duck_output_while_recording true
vinput config set /global/duck_output_volume 0.25

Both options are also available on the Control page in Vinput GUI, under the Audio section.

Language

default_language sets the default language, affecting UI display and some model behavior.

vinput config set /global/default_language zh

Streaming Display Width

MaxStreamingDisplayWidth controls the maximum visual column width of the live streaming recognition preview in the Fcitx5 preedit tooltip. When streaming recognition text exceeds this width, earlier words are automatically folded into Head...Tail to keep the floating input window within screen bounds. Set to 0 to disable folding. Default is 60.

Configurable via Fcitx5 Configuration GUI or in ~/.config/fcitx5/conf/vinput.conf:

MaxStreamingDisplayWidth=60

General CLI

vinput config get <JSON Pointer>        # Read any config value
vinput config set <JSON Pointer> <val>  # Write any config value
vinput config edit core                 # Edit core config (config.json)
vinput config edit fcitx                # Edit Fcitx addon config (vinput.conf)
vinput daemon restart                   # Restart daemon to apply changes