Voice dictation for Steam Frame. Speak into a text field using your controllers, without a keyboard or an always-on microphone.

Works in the Desktop app and standalone desktop apps while Steam is in gamepad mode. Dictation is unavailable in the Steam interface and VR games.

Install on your Frame

1. Open Desktop, then open Konsole (the terminal).

2. Paste this command and press Enter:

   curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/techieyann/frame-voice/main/get.sh | sh
   

3. Follow setup to choose how your speech is transcribed. If asked, enter your SteamOS administrator password to allow text input. If you have never set that password, run passwd in Konsole first.

4. Find the Frame Voice microphone icon in the Desktop tray.

Choose transcription and language

Option	What you need	Why choose it
Groq · Cloud	Internet and a Groq API key	Speech is sent to Groq for transcription; no local model download
Local · Fast	A model download of about 142 MiB	Transcription runs on your Frame and works offline after setup
Local · Balanced	A model download of about 466 MiB	Favors accuracy over speed and works offline after setup

Choose Language in the Transcription tab, or Automatic detection if you use more than one language. Local setup downloads the appropriate English or multilingual model. Groq needs no language-specific download.

For accented characters or non-Latin scripts, use a standalone app such as Firefox. These characters are not yet supported inside the nested Desktop.

Try your first dictation

1. Open an app and focus the text field you want to fill.
2. Briefly touch either joystick cap, lift your thumb, then touch it again and hold.
3. Wait for the start tone and microphone badge, then speak.
4. Lift your thumb to finish. Wait for the transcription to appear.

Click the joystick during recording to cancel. After text appears, A submits and releasing B clears; the left D-pad right/left do the same. Submit and clear are available briefly after dictation and stop when you change focus. Nothing submits automatically.

Open Configure… in the tray to customize Frame Voice. See the settings guide for the General, Transcription, and Controllers tabs.

Updates

Use Configure… → General → Check for updates. Updates preserve saved settings, API keys, and downloaded models. See updating Frame Voice.

If something does not work

• No tone or microphone badge: focus an app's text field, check that dictation is running in the tray, and try Restart dictation. A plain hold does not trigger recording; it must be tap, release, then hold.
• Groq produces no text: check your internet connection and API key.
• Local setup fails: check free storage and internet access for the first download.
• Need more detail: choose View recent logs in the tray, or see troubleshooting and configuration.

For developers and agents

The installer provides ./install-gui.sh for GUI setup, --gui for Desktop setup, and --tui for a terminal menu. Agents can use explicit flags without interactive dialogs:

./install.sh ./bin/frame-voice --tray-binary ./bin/frame-voice-tray \
  --non-interactive --backend local-fast --language auto

For Groq, use --backend groq --language en --groq-key-file /path/to/key. Noninteractive setup requires input permissions to be configured already.

frame-voice --version shows the version and build revision. frame-voice --check-updates --json returns update status; use ~/.local/share/frame-voice/update.sh --tui for a guided terminal update. See the configuration reference for advanced settings.

Installation and removal · Settings by tab · Builds and release channels · MIT license