A few months ago Canonical announced Myna as a speech-to-text solution for Ubuntu 26.10 as part of their effort for building a context-aware desktop. Myna as of today is available in "tech preview" form not only for Ubuntu 26.10 but also the LTS releases.

Ahead of the Ubuntu 26.10 official release on 15 October, Myna is now available in tech preview form. Myna is optional on Ubuntu 26.10 and can also be installed on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and Ubuntu 26.04 LTS via Snap.

Before getting too excited, Myna is still in early stages of development:

"Myna is still under active development, so you should expect some rough edges. The core experience is there: press a shortcut, speak, and Myna transcribes directly into the application you’re using."

Myna runs the speech-to-text model locally and requires no Internet use after downloading the initial model. Myna supports Parakeet, Whisper, and FunASR on the back-end.

Those wishing to learn more about Myna can do so via the Ubuntu blog.