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A small on-screen indicator that shows SpeakoFlow is listening, so you are never guessing whether it heard you. It appears on the monitor your mouse cursor is on.

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Overlay style

Settings → General → Overlay → Overlay. A fresh install is on Auto, which is why you get the live card without configuring anything. See Live vs. batch transcription.

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Overlay position

Settings → General → Overlay → Overlay position. The other choices are Top and None. Setting either the style or the position to None hides the overlay, because they are checked independently. Linux defaults to None because a native GNOME/Wayland session gives an app no reliable way to float a window above everything else. Set it to Bottom or Top if your compositor handles it.
This one style setting governs the overlay for assistant voice turns too. A separate assistant overlay style exists in the settings file, but nothing reads it in the current build and there is no control for it, so changing it has no effect.

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Details

Auto is not offered in the dropdown. The dropdown shows you which option Auto currently resolves to, and picking anything writes a concrete value that overrides Auto from then on.Live is only honored on a model that natively streams. On any other model it degrades to Minimal, so a batch model never shows an empty live window even if Live was explicitly chosen.
A short notice appears when something did not work, for example “Flow needs an assistant model, pasted as dictation.” It auto-hides after a moment.
To abandon a recording, use the Cancel shortcut. It has no default binding, because a global Esc would swallow Esc presses meant for other apps. Bind a key for it in Settings → General → Recording.
The overlay is re-centered for whichever size the current state needs before it is shown, so a switch between the pill and the live card does not leave it briefly misplaced.
On a native GNOME/Wayland session the overlay cannot stay above other windows. Mutter does not implement wlr-layer-shell, and Wayland gives apps no way to raise themselves.SpeakoFlow detects GNOME on Wayland and runs under XWayland, where “keep above” works. That is automatic and needs no setup. X11 and KDE/wlroots Wayland sessions already work.To force native Wayland anyway, launch with SPEAKOFLOW_ALLOW_WAYLAND=1. To disable GTK layer shell under a layer-shell compositor, use SPEAKOFLOW_NO_GTK_LAYER_SHELL=1. More in Troubleshooting.
Last modified on August 7, 2026