By default OpenWhispr uses whatever microphone your operating system is using.
If that’s the wrong one — or if you’ve plugged in something better — you can
choose explicitly.
Choosing a device
Open Settings, then Preferences under App, and find
Input Device.
Pick a specific microphone from the list, or leave it on System Default to
follow whatever your operating system is set to. The app confirms the current
choice underneath — “Using: …” — and marks your machine’s own microphone as
(Built-in).
System Default follows your OS. That’s convenient, but it means plugging
in headphones or joining a call can silently change which microphone
OpenWhispr hears. If dictation works and then mysteriously stops after you
connect something, this is the first place to look.
Prefer Built-in Microphone
There’s a separate setting called Prefer Built-in Microphone, and the app is
blunt about why: “External microphones may cause latency or reduced
transcription quality.”
That reads backwards if you’ve bought a good microphone, so it’s worth
explaining. The problem is usually not the microphone — it’s the link.
Bluetooth headsets in particular switch to a low-quality, low-bandwidth mode
when they’re being used as an input device, which is exactly what speech
recognition is worst at. Your laptop’s built-in microphone, unglamorous as it
is, is a clean wired input at full bandwidth.
Rules of thumb:
If no microphones are listed
The app will say “No microphones were detected” and point you at your system
settings. That’s an operating-system-level problem rather than an OpenWhispr
one — see my microphone isn’t working,
which covers permissions per platform.
If the list is populated but you get “Unable to access microphone,” it’s a
permission rather than a device problem, and the same article covers it.
The microphone you choose here is the one used for dictation and for
recording your side of a meeting. Capturing the other participants is a separate
mechanism entirely — see
capturing both sides of the call.
