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Install only what you need

A plain install gives you hold-to-talk dictation and nothing that dictation does not need. Every heavier capability — a camera, a neural voice, speaker embeddings — is an optional dependency that is fetched only when you turn that capability on.

That design has one failure mode, and it is the one this page exists to close: a capability can be one word to type and gigabytes to download. So the price is printed where you choose, not only where you pay.

See what something costs before you turn it on

$ yazses features
│         NAME                             TOGGLE NAME            DOWNLOAD  ADVICE
│  ● ON   Voice-activity overlay           overlay                ~256 MB   recommended (on by default)
│  ○ off  Read-Back Loop                   read-back              ~352 MB   optional
│  ○ off  Glance-Type (camera)             gaze                   ~223 MB   experimental — not advised yet
│  ○ off  Cocktail Filter (voice focus)    cocktail               ~3.1 GB   experimental — not advised yet
│  ○ off  Dictation Reflow                 reflow                           optional

DOWNLOAD is what a fresh install fetches in total — the whole dependency closure, not just the top-level package, plus any model files the capability pulls down the first time it runs. cocktail reads as one small feature and resolves to speechbrain, which pulls PyTorch and the NVIDIA CUDA stack. read-back is 12 MB of packages and a 340 MB voice model, and the column has to say 352 MB or it is answering a question about pip rather than about your disk.

The two arrive at different times, which is why yazses features enable names them separately: the packages land while you wait on the command, the model on the first run afterwards.

Two engines are not priced here

stt-parakeet and stt-moonshine fetch their weights through their own libraries rather than through YazSes, so the column covers their packages only. Both models are substantial — expect a further download on first use.

A blank cell means there is nothing to download. Most capabilities are blank: reflow, undo, commands and the rest are pure logic that ships in the base install.

If a row reads ◌ set rather than ● ON or ○ off, your config turns that capability on and nothing in this build reads it — it costs you nothing and does nothing. yazses features disable <name> clears the key. See yazses features.

Two numbers, two questions

The catalogue quotes the full size, because it is a price list read by anyone. yazses features enable <name> quotes what is missing on your machine, which is usually smaller and is the number you actually pay. If you already have PyTorch for something else, enable will say so.

Sizes are read from a table that ships inside the package. Listing capabilities never touches the network (ADR-011).

The three tiers

The ADVICE column says how much you should want each one:

Tier Meaning
core dictation itself — not optional, not removable
recommended (on by default) a fresh install enables these; they are small or free
optional useful, off until you ask
experimental — not advised yet works, but has a known sharp edge; enable refuses without --force
planned — designed, not yet wired in the catalogue so it is honest, not yet callable

Nothing in the recommended tier is expensive except the tray and overlay, which share one Qt install (~256 MB) and give you the on-screen state that makes dictation legible. On a headless or memory-tight machine, turn both off and the Qt dependency is never fetched:

yazses features disable tray
yazses features disable overlay
yazses restart

Turning one on

$ yazses features enable read-back

⚠  Large download — this downloads ~12 MB (7 packages), plus ~340 MB of model
   files on first use.
   Ctrl-C now to stop. `--no-install` prints the packages instead of fetching them.

Above ~250 MB, packages and model files counted together, the warning is loud and tells you how to stop it. It is a warning rather than a prompt on purpose: a prompt you have to answer is one more thing to click through, and knowing mid-download still beats knowing afterwards.

To see the packages without fetching anything:

yazses features enable gaze --no-install

Keeping an install small

  • Ask what it costs first — yazses features --category access or --tier opt narrows the table to the group you are considering.
  • Prefer the smaller engine. stt-parakeet is ~4 MB of packages on top of what you have — its weights come down separately on first use — and it is more accurate than whisper-large-v3 on English; see choosing a model for the memory side of that decision.
  • Turn things back off. yazses features disable <name> stops loading the capability. It does not uninstall the packages — uv pip uninstall does, if you want the disk back.
  • Start from nothing. yazses features reset returns every capability to what a fresh install ships with.

See also