Click anywhere by voice with the mouse grid¶

The Voice Mouse Grid is a way to point and click with no hand on the mouse, where nothing else can find the button for you: a canvas, a game, a custom-drawn window. You say "mouse grid", and the screen is split into numbered cells (3 × 3 by default). Saying a number moves the pointer to the centre of that cell and splits that cell again, so a few numbers get you to a precise spot. Then you say "click".

It is experimental and off by default.

Turn it on¶

yazses features enable mousegrid --force   # experimental, so enable asks for --force
yazses restart

or, in config.toml:

[mousegrid]
enabled = true
cols = 3
rows = 3

To see the numbered cells, the overlay must be on too ([overlay] enabled = true). Without it the grid still works — the pointer itself jumps to each cell's centre — but you have to know the numbering: cells count left to right, top to bottom, like a phone keypad.

What you can say¶

Every phrase must be the whole utterance. "Click the link" is dictation, and so is "three apples".

What it never does¶

• It never claims words while no grid is open, except the exact phrase "mouse grid". Your dictation is unchanged until you say it.
• It never swallows speech it does not understand. While a grid is open, anything that is not a grid command closes the grid and is dictated as usual.
• It never clicks before you have chosen a cell, so a stray "click" cannot click the middle of your screen.
• It does not stay open by accident: an open grid closes itself after 30 seconds with no grid command.
• It respects the hands-free pause (yazses handsfree pause, or the voice stop word) when [handsfree_safety] is enabled: while paused, the grid does not open and the pointer does not move. With [handsfree_safety] off (the default) there is no pause to respect, and yazses handsfree pause does not stop the grid; say "cancel" instead.
• Homophones are not accepted. "To", "for" and "tree" are not numbers; if you are misheard, say the number again, or "back".

Where it works¶

The grid needs a pointer backend that can move to an exact position:

• X11 (Linux): yes. The screen size is read from xrandr.
• macOS: yes. The screen size comes from the overlay, so turn the overlay on.
• Wayland and Windows: not yet. Their pointer backends only move relative to where the pointer already is, and the grid refuses rather than guess: saying "mouse grid" draws no grid. The daemon log names the reason, and with [earcon] on you hear the error tone.

Limits, stated plainly¶

• The grammar and the 30-second timeout were tuned on synthetic input only (test transcripts, not real speech in real rooms). Nobody has measured how often a real recogniser hears "click" or a number when you did not say one; check it in your own room before you rely on it.
• Number words go up to sixteen. On a larger grid, say the bigger numbers as digits; a bigger number spoken as a word ("seventeen") is not a grid command, so it closes the grid and is typed. The daemon logs a warning at start-up when cols × rows is above sixteen.
• Hyphenated spellings are read as spaces, so "Right-click." and "Mouse-grid." work.
• On a HiDPI X11 setup where Qt scales the overlay, the drawn cells may not line up with the pointer positions. This has not been checked on a scaled display.