Voice Assistant
The Voice Assistant is a hands-free AI companion that runs in the background on your desktop. It lets you have real-time voice conversations with Kognar without bringing the main window to the foreground.
Enabling the Voice Assistant
- Open Settings (
Ctrl/Cmd+U) - Go to General > Voice Assistant
- Toggle Voice Assistant on
- Optionally set a global keyboard shortcut to activate it from anywhere on your system
The floating control
When active, a small floating control appears near the bottom-center of your screen. It stays on top of other windows so you can always reach it.
Use it to:
- Start / stop a voice conversation
- See the current status (listening, processing, responding)
How it works
- Activate with the global shortcut or by clicking the floating control
- Speak naturally — the assistant listens in real time
- Kognar responds with voice output
- Continue the back-and-forth without typing
Each voice session is saved as a new conversation in your chat history, just like a text conversation.
Settings
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Enable | Turn the voice assistant on or off |
| Global shortcut | Keyboard shortcut to activate the assistant from any app |
| Language | Language for the voice conversation — follows the app language or can be set independently |
Voice input in chat
Outside of the full voice assistant, you can also use voice to fill the chat input field:
- Click the microphone icon in the chat input bar
- Speak your message
- The text is transcribed and placed in the input field automatically
- Review and press Enter to send
This is useful for dictating longer messages without switching to full voice mode.
See Transcription for details on how audio is processed.