Wake Word

Wake word lets you activate NoteTalker completely hands-free. Say “Hey Jarvis” and NoteTalker starts listening — no button press needed. It’s designed for moments when your hands are busy or you just want a more natural, conversational experience.

How It Works

1. Enable wake word in Settings > Voice > Wake Word
2. Accept the one-time prompt to enable continuous listening
3. Say “Hey Jarvis” from anywhere while the app is open
4. NoteTalker starts recording — speak your message
5. After 0.5 seconds of silence, NoteTalker stops recording and transcribes your message on your own device with Whisper
6. The response arrives in the chat panel (and is spoken aloud if text-to-speech (TTS) is enabled)

Privacy: What Stays Local

Note

The wake word model runs entirely on your device using a local neural network. Your microphone audio is processed locally and nothing is uploaded — not before the wake word, and not after. Every step that follows runs on your machine too.

Here’s exactly what happens at each step — and every one of them stays on your hardware:

Step	Where it runs
Listening for “Hey Jarvis”	Your device — local OpenWakeWord ONNX model
Recording after the wake word	Your device
Transcribing your message	Your device — local Whisper
Generating the AI response	Your device — local language model
Speaking the reply aloud	Your device — local Kokoro voice

Because nothing leaves your machine, wake word works with networking disabled — detection, transcription, the AI reply, and spoken output all run locally, online or off.

Setting Up Wake Word

1. Open Settings and go to the Voice section
2. Find Wake Word and toggle it on
3. You’ll see a one-time prompt explaining how it works — accept it to proceed
4. The app will start listening for “Hey Jarvis” in the background

Tip

Wake word works best when NoteTalker is the focused application. Background listening while using other apps may vary depending on your operating system.

Adjusting Sensitivity

The threshold controls how closely the detected audio must match the wake word pattern. You can adjust it in Settings > Voice > Wake Word Sensitivity:

Threshold	Behavior
0.2 (lower)	More sensitive — triggers more easily, but may have more false activations
0.3 (default)	Balanced — works well for most users in normal conditions
0.6 (higher)	Less sensitive — requires a clearer, closer pronunciation of the wake word

If NoteTalker activates when you didn’t say the wake word, raise the threshold. If it misses your voice too often, lower it.

Pausing Wake Word

If you need to temporarily stop wake word listening — for example, during a meeting or when playing audio — you can pause it from the Voice settings without fully disabling it. Resume it when you’re ready.