Support external speech to text services

[metronidazole]

It would be nice if this supported android's platform for speech to text services so I could use an external app for voice to text. e.g. FUTO voice input https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCGaKvZpJYc

[Stypox]

Thank you for pointing that out to me! That's a fantastic advancement for speech to text on Android!

[paolo-caroni]

I have added the repo to my fdroid, thanks @metronidazole

Also there is more issue like this... it's not the first time that is asked and it is on the roadmap.

[paolo-caroni]

I would like to add that seems that FUTO is not yet a really FOSS project, also in not listed as a vocal input, it support only IME API.

[AyoungDukie]

For reference, this still appears to be the case that Futo is using their FTL "source-available" license. However, at least in Android 14, it is able to be used as voice input by other keyboards

[dessalines]

This would be wonderful to have. I've compared Vosk with Futo and Futo is nearly always better.

[domportera]

agreed - i can see myself using this very often with FUTO voice

[andsofine]

related to #169

[alexispurslane]

This would be hugely useful to me as well!

[Alexanderkocha]

I use Google's STT myself and I would love to be able to use it in this project as well.

[Stypox]

Please let me know if #294 works. This PR implements one possible way to interact with external STT services, i.e. by opening the STT popup offered by another application (e.g. whisperIME: woheller69/whisperIME#53 (comment) ). So the PR only fixes one possible interpretation of this issue, while the other interpretation is using RecognizerService which would make for a far more seamless implementation.

Edit: I tested this with FUTO Voice input and it works quite well!

Screen_recording_20250227_005009.webm

[Alexanderkocha]

Sorry to reply after a month after this comment, however I am glad to be able to say it is working for me.

However one problem is that the region of STT defaults to my local setting and cannot be overwritten. Unfortunately, Google's STT does not work offline for my device's language.

I am not sure how keyboards like Microsoft SwiftKey get around this, but they seem to invoke Google STT in English by default.

So to summarise, it works, however due to my setup, I'm not able to make use of it "privately".

Many thanks for this PR, it's wonderful to see this project progress.

[Stypox]

Thanks for the report! This is caused by #294 (comment)

I tested with "speech recognition and synthesis from google", which should be the Google STT you are referring to, and it chooses the correct language now.