How do you set up Talon Voice?

Setting up Talon Voice takes four steps: download, choose an engine, add the community commands, and test. Talon does nothing useful on its own, because it recognizes no commands until you add scripts ¹. Skipping the command set is the most common reason a new install seems dead. The steps below describe Talon 1.0 as documented in October 2026. For background, see our guide to Talon Voice and the overview of dictation software.

Check that your system is supported first

Talon's documentation lists Windows 8 or newer, macOS High Sierra (10.13) or newer, and Linux on X11 as requirements ². Wayland support is not planned ³, so on Linux you need an X11 session. Talon 1.0 is also planned to be the last public release for Linux/X11 ⁴, so check the question on whether Talon is free if you need ongoing Linux support. You also need a microphone. A headset microphone usually recognizes speech better than a laptop one.

The four setup steps

1. Download Talon for your system from talonvoice.com and install it. After the 1.0 release, the download links may still point to version 0.4, to make downgrading easier ⁵. Check the version after you install.
2. Choose the speech engine. Click the Talon tray icon, then select an engine from the Speech Recognition menu ⁶. The engine that comes with Talon is Conformer D, which runs locally ⁷. On Windows you may use Dragon instead ⁸.
3. Add the community command set. Clone talonhub/community with git into the user folder of your Talon Home directory. That directory is %APPDATA%\Talon on Windows and ~/.talon on macOS and Linux ⁹. On a Mac, the clone goes into ~/.talon/user.
4. Test a few commands. Say "help active" to list the commands available in the frontmost app ¹⁰. Then try "air bat cap", which types abc ¹¹.

Talon 1.0 also introduced a default command set of its own, with labels, numbers and a mouse grid ¹². If you are unsure which set your install uses, run "help active" and read what appears.

Setup differs slightly by system

On a Mac, Talon needs the usual accessibility and microphone permissions before it can type for you. Grant them when the system asks, and restart Talon if commands still do nothing.

Optional extras come after the basics

An eye tracker is optional. The community wiki says a Tobii 5 must first be set up on a Windows computer with internet access, after which it works on Windows, Mac or Linux ¹⁴. For coding, add the Cursorless extension for VS Code. Its installation guide starts with Talon and a speech engine, then the community commands, then the extension ⁶. Our page on how Talon voice coding works explains that workflow.

How to start using it

Talon decides what a phrase means by its mode. In command mode, speech is interpreted as commands by default ¹⁵. In mixed mode, anything that is not a command is transcribed as plain text ¹⁶. Start in a plain text editor and follow this order:

• Learn the spoken alphabet, then edit with a few commands such as "copy that" and "paste that" ¹⁷.
• Use "help active" whenever you forget a command.
• Keep your keyboard and mouse nearby while you learn.

It depends on your goal

If the install fails, the most useful help is the Talon community wiki and Slack. Terms used here are defined in the glossary: Talon Voice, voice command and on-device speech recognition.