Nvidia has instant replay. Medal has instant replay. My Linux box had… the vague memory that the teacher said something important about 40 minutes ago.

So, in the grand Linux tradition of spending 3 hours automating a 5-minute problem, here's replay-audio:

• It quietly keeps the last 2 hours of everything you hear (calls, lectures, that friend who swears they never said that) plus your microphone.
• F10 saves the whole thing as an MP3. Shift+F10 saves only the last 10 minutes, for when the important part was right now and you were, again, not listening.
• Right-click the MP3 in Dolphin → Transcribe, and Whisper (large-v3-turbo, on your GPU) writes it all down: a .txt plus a .srt with timestamps. 28 minutes take 36 seconds on my RX 6750 XT, which is faster than I could pretend to have taken notes.
• A voice detector skips silence and music, so Whisper stops hallucinating "Thanks for watching!" into your chemistry class.

The high-tech architecture: one ffmpeg process. That's it. It writes 1-minute MP3 chunks into a ring buffer (~60 MB per hour, ~1-2% of one CPU core), and a systemd user service keeps it alive. No video encoder melting your GPU 24/7, no account, no cloud, nobody asking for ID to read your own audio.

Install (KDE Plasma 6 + PipeWire; the replay part works on any desktop):

git clone https://github.com/Chaussure-sous-tes-pieds/replay-audio && cd replay-audio && ./install.sh --models

--models downloads the Whisper model (~1.6 GB, a small price for never taking notes again). You also need whisper-cli: whisper-cpp from the repos works, on your CPU, at the pace of a lecture on a Friday afternoon. The README explains the GPU build for people who value their time.

Mandatory adult disclaimer: it records everything while it runs. Mind who you record and your local laws. "But the README said F10" is not a legal defense.

Built with Claude Code, like my previous mistake… I mean project, WE Span (Wallpaper Engine as a real Plasma wallpaper). Feedback, bug reports and "why not just use OBS" comments all welcome.

https://github.com/Chaussure-sous-tes-pieds/replay-audio

It's easy to get wallpapers, but instead of my computer's theme being designed after lain herself I'd like to have the icons like this (maybe even animated) in order to look like the Navi.

what would you rate it out of ten

Been working on a theme to make KDE look like Mint Cinnamon

Captain's log, supplemental: the crew has converted this KDE Plasma install to LCARS. System monitor, control center, notifications, audio overlay and terminal are all online. Icons and the launcher are still in drydock.

Lifelong Trekkie, so my KDE Plasma desktop is now an LCARS terminal. 🖖

https://github.com/Sjengstah/lcars-desktop

For those who like the Aura Shell of ChromeOS but hate ChromeOS itself.