Wristle

Dictate into your PC from your wrist. Wristle turns a Wear OS watch into a wireless push-to-talk microphone for the local dictation app you already use, such as Hex or Handy. Hold the button on your watch (or tap it on your watch face), talk, and the text appears wherever your cursor is.

_{Ready · Listening (tap-to-lock) · One-tap complication on the watch face}

Your dictation app still does all the speech recognition, locally, on your PC. Wristle only moves raw audio from the watch to the PC over your home Wi-Fi.

Wear OS watch ──Wi-Fi (LAN only)──▶ Wristle listener ──virtual audio cable──▶ dictation app ──▶ text at cursor
 mic + button                      holds the app's shortcut

Features

• Hold to talk, or tap once to lock recording on and tap again to send
• Wristle Dictate: a watch face complication that starts listening in one tap
• Finds your PC automatically on the local network; approve each new watch once
• Audio is buffered while the watch reconnects, so the first words aren't lost
• Can start silently at login on Windows
• No cloud, no account, nothing saved unless you ask

Compatibility

	Status
Watches	Tested: Pixel Watch 4. Should work on any Wear OS 3+ watch with a microphone and Wi-Fi (Galaxy Watch 4 and newer, other Pixel Watches, OnePlus Watch 2, TicWatch Pro 5, …), but these are not tested yet.
Dictation apps	Any app that (1) lets you choose the microphone and (2) records while a shortcut is held. Tested: Hex on Windows. Expected to work: Handy.
Desktop	Tested: Windows 11. macOS and Linux (X11) are supported in the code but not tested yet. Python 3.10+.

Only the setups marked tested have been tried. If you run Wristle on another watch, dictation app or OS, please open an issue saying what worked and what didn't (watch model, Wear OS version, app), or send a PR updating this table.

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Setup

1. Desktop

Install a virtual audio cable

• Windows: VB-Audio Virtual Cable (free). Install it, then reboot if the cable doesn't show up.
• macOS: BlackHole, e.g. brew install blackhole-2ch.
• Linux: pactl load-module module-null-sink sink_name=wristle and pactl load-module module-remap-source master=wristle.monitor source_name=wristle_mic. The listener plays into the wristle sink by default (set PULSE_SINK to use another), and your dictation app records from wristle_mic.

Afterwards, check that your normal speakers and mic are still the system defaults. Windows sometimes switches to the new cable.

Configure your dictation app

App	Microphone	Shortcut mode	Listener option
Hex (Windows)	CABLE Output (VB-Audio Virtual Cable)	Hold (default Ctrl+Space)	none needed
Hex (macOS)	BlackHole 2ch	Hold Option (default)	none needed
Handy	the cable	push-to-talk	--hotkey <your Handy shortcut>
Other	the cable	hold / push-to-talk	--hotkey <shortcut>

Shortcut format: ctrl+space, alt, alt_r, ctrl+shift+space, f13 and so on.

Run the listener

• Windows: double-click desktop\start.bat. The first run installs the Python packages. When Windows Firewall asks, allow Private networks.
• macOS / Linux: desktop/start.sh (on macOS, give your terminal app Accessibility permission so it can press the shortcut).

Pass options after the script name, e.g. start.bat --hotkey ctrl+shift+space.

Quick checks:

python wristle.py --list-devices   # the cable should be listed
python wristle.py --test-hotkey    # your app's recording indicator should appear for 4 s

2. Watch

Download wristle-x.y.z.apk from Releases. Wear OS can't install APKs by tapping them, so use ADB over Wi-Fi once:

1. On the watch: Settings → System → About → Versions, tap Build number 7 times.
2. Settings → Developer options: turn on ADB debugging and Wireless debugging.
3. Install ADB on the PC: winget install Google.PlatformTools (Windows) or brew install android-platform-tools (macOS).
4. In Wireless debugging, tap Pair new device and keep that screen open:

   adb pair <ip>:<pairing port>        # enter the 6-digit code
   adb connect <ip>:<port>             # the port on the main Wireless debugging screen
   adb -s <ip>:<port> install -r wristle-0.1.0.apk   # -r also updates an existing install

5. Turn Wireless debugging off again. It drains the battery.

On a phone instead of a PC, apps like Bugjaeger can install the APK the same way.

3. First use

1. Start the listener on the PC, then open Wristle on the watch and allow the microphone.
2. The watch shows Approve on PC · Pairing code 1234. Check that the PC shows the same code, then type y + Enter in the listener window.
3. Click into any text box on the PC. On the watch, hold the button, talk, and release. Or tap to lock, and tap again to send. ✕ Cancel discards.

If discovery fails, tap the status text at the top of the watch screen and enter the PC's IP address.

One tap from the watch face

Long-press your watch face → Customize → complications → choose a slot → Wristle. Tapping it opens Wristle Dictate, which is already listening. Tap once to send and it returns to the watch face. Some faces only allow their own complications. If Wristle isn't listed, try another face, or use the Wristle Dictate app icon.

Start automatically (Windows)

Run desktop\install_autostart.bat. It starts the listener now, with no window, and at every login. Options go after it, as with start.bat. stop.bat stops it and uninstall_autostart.bat removes it. The log is at %APPDATA%\wristle\listener.log.

Pairing a new watch needs the window version: run stop.bat, then start.bat, approve, and close it.

Heads-up: while your dictation app's microphone is set to the cable, it won't hear your laptop mic. On Windows you can feed both: Sound settings → your mic → Properties → Listen → "Listen to this device" with playback through CABLE Input.

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Listener options

Option	Default
--hotkey	ctrl+space (Win/Linux), alt (macOS)	Shortcut to hold while you talk
--device	CABLE Input / BlackHole	Output device for the cable (name fragment or number)
--gain	1.0	Make watch audio louder or quieter
--start-delay	0.15	Silence before speech, if the first word gets clipped
--tail	0.35	Keep holding after speech ends, if the last word gets cut
--name	computer name	Name the watch shows for this PC (changing it means pairing again)
--save-wav DIR	off	Save each dictation for debugging
--background / --stop		Run without a window / stop a running listener
--list-devices, --test-hotkey		Diagnostics

Troubleshooting

Watch says	Try
Waiting for Wi-Fi…	The watch must join the same Wi-Fi as the PC.
Can't reach PC / Looking for PC…	Is the listener running? Allow it through the firewall (network set to Private). Guest networks and "AP isolation" block device-to-device traffic. Enter the PC's IP manually.
Sent ✓ but no text	Check the app's microphone is the cable and it's in hold / push-to-talk mode. Run --test-hotkey; use --save-wav rec to check the audio.
First or last word missing	--start-delay 0.3 / --tail 0.6
Denied on PC	You answered n on the PC. Reopen Wristle on the watch to ask again.
Approve on PC every time	The PC lost its pairing file, or the watch app was reinstalled. Approve it again.

Windows firewall fix (admin PowerShell), if you dismissed the prompt:

Get-NetFirewallRule -Direction Inbound -Action Block | Where-Object DisplayName -like "*python*" | Remove-NetFirewallRule
New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Wristle TCP" -Direction Inbound -Protocol TCP -LocalPort 47820 -Action Allow -Profile Private
New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Wristle UDP" -Direction Inbound -Protocol UDP -LocalPort 47821 -Action Allow -Profile Private

Privacy and security

• Audio goes only over your local network, never to the internet.
• Audio is not encrypted on the network. Use Wristle on networks you trust.
• Only watches you approve on the PC (4-digit code) can start dictation. On approval the PC gives the watch a random key; after that the watch proves it has the key on every connection (HMAC challenge-response), so a device that copies the watch's ID can't connect. The key is sent once, at pairing, so pair on a network you trust.
• Approved watches and their keys are in paired_watches.json in the settings folder (%APPDATA%\wristle, ~/Library/Application Support/wristle or ~/.config/wristle). Keep it private. Delete the file to unpair everything.
• What Wristle doesn't protect against: someone on your network who can intercept and alter traffic as it passes (an active man-in-the-middle) can listen to and change a session that is already open.
• The listener presses only the one shortcut you configure, and only while a paired watch is sending audio.
• Nothing is saved unless you pass --save-wav.

How it works

• Discovery: the watch broadcasts WRISTLE? on UDP 47821, and the listener replies with its TCP port and hostname.
• Pairing: the watch says hello with its ID. A new watch gets a random 4-digit code to compare and waits for you to approve it on the PC, which then sends it a 256-bit key. A paired watch gets a random nonce and must answer with HMAC-SHA256(key, "wristle-auth|<nonce>|<id>").
• Stream: length-prefixed frames over TCP 47820 (hello, auth, start, 20 ms chunks of 16 kHz mono 16-bit PCM, end or cancel, pings, status).
• Desktop: the audio is resampled to the cable's rate and played into it while the shortcut is held.
• Watch app: plain Java with no AndroidX. The complication speaks the Wear OS complication binder protocol directly.

desktop/fake_watch.py streams a WAV file as if it were a watch. It's handy for working on the desktop side without a watch.

Building the watch app

watch/build.sh builds the APK without Gradle, on Linux or WSL:

sudo apt install default-jdk aapt apksigner zipalign dalvik-exchange android-sdk-platform-23
watch/build.sh          # → watch/build/wristle-<version>.apk

The first build creates a signing key in ~/.wristle/. Back it up and never commit it. Updates only install over an existing app if they're signed with the same key. You can also point KEYSTORE and KEYSTORE_PASS at your own key.

Releases via GitHub Actions (optional): add the repository secrets KEYSTORE_BASE64 (your keystore, base64-encoded) and KEYSTORE_PASS, push a tag such as v0.2.0, then run Actions → Release → Run workflow on that tag. It builds and signs the APK, zips the desktop listener, and attaches both to a GitHub Release.

Credits

• Hex and Handy, the local dictation apps that inspired this. Wristle isn't affiliated with either.
• The complication provider follows the protocol in Google's open-source AndroidX Wear watch face libraries.

License

MIT