Speech (STT & TTS)

Pia includes local speech processing — no cloud APIs required.

Speech-to-Text (STT)

Pia runs speech-to-text locally on your machine and offers two engines you can choose between:

• Parakeet (the default) — multilingual, and it detects the spoken language automatically.
• Whisper — lets you pick a model size to balance speed and accuracy.

Choosing an engine

1. Open Settings → General → Speech
2. Pick your engine from the STT Backend dropdown
3. Click the Download button to grab the required files — you only need to do this once per engine

Parakeet

Parakeet is the default engine. There’s no model size to choose — it works out of the box and detects the language you’re speaking on its own. Just click Download to set it up.

Whisper

With Whisper, choose a model size from the dropdown: Tiny, Base, Small, Medium, or Large. Then click Download to download that model.

Tip

Start with the Base model for a good balance of speed and accuracy. Larger models are more accurate but slower.

Recording

Once your engine is set up, click the microphone icon in the chat to start recording.

Text-to-Speech (TTS)

Powered by Piper for local, offline voice synthesis.

Downloading a Voice

1. Open Settings → Text-to-Speech
2. Scroll through the voice list — each card shows the voice name, language, gender, and quality
3. Find a voice you like and click Download
4. Wait for the progress bar to finish

You can download as many voices as you want.

Selecting a Voice

1. Once a voice is downloaded, click Select to make it your active voice
2. The card will show an Active badge to confirm it’s in use

Only one voice can be active at a time. To switch, just select a different downloaded voice.

Using TTS

Once a voice is active, AI responses will be read aloud automatically.

Privacy

All speech processing happens locally on your device. Audio is never sent to external servers.