Expanding yasnippets by voice in Emacs and other applications

Mar 4, 2026| emacs, audio, speech-recognition

Yasnippet is a template system for Emacs. I want to use it by voice. I'd like to be able to say things like "Okay, define interactive function" and have that expand to a matching snippet in Emacs or other applications. Here's a quick demonstration of expanding simple snippets:

Screencast of expanding snippets by voice in Emacs and in other applications

Transcript

00:00 So I've defined some yasnippets with names that I can say. Here, for example, in this menu, you can see I've got "define interactive function" and "with a buffer that I'll display." And in fundamental mode, I have some other things too. Let's give it a try.
00:19 I press my shortcut. "Okay, define an interactive function." You can see that this is a yasnippet. Tab navigation still works.
00:33 I can say, "OK, with a buffer that I'll display," and it expands that also.
00:45 I can expand snippets in other applications as well, thanks to a global keyboard shortcut.
00:50 Here, for example, I can say, "OK, my email." It inserts my email address.
01:02 Yasnippet definitions can also execute Emacs Lisp. So I can say, "OK, date today," and have that evaluated to the actual date.
01:21 So that's an example of using voice to expand snippets.

This is handled by the following code:

(defun my-whisper-maybe-expand-snippet (text)
  "Add to `whisper-insert-text-at-point'."
  (if (and text
           (string-match
            "^ok\\(?:ay\\)?[,\\.]? \\(.+\\)" text))
    (let* ((name
            (downcase
             (string-trim
              (replace-regexp-in-string "[,\\.]" "" (match-string 1 text)))))
           (matching
            (seq-find (lambda (o)
                        (subed-word-data-compare-normalized-string-distance
                         name
                         (downcase (yas--template-name o))))
                      (yas--all-templates (yas--get-snippet-tables)))))
      (if matching
          (progn
            (if (frame-focus-state)
                (progn
                  (yas-expand-snippet matching)
                  nil)
              ;; In another application
              (with-temp-buffer
                (yas-minor-mode)
                (yas-expand-snippet matching)
                (buffer-string))))
        text))
    text))

This code relies on my fork of whisper.el, which lets me specify a list of functions for whisper-insert-text-at-point. (I haven't asked for upstream review yet because I'm still testing things, and I don't know if it actually works for anyone else yet.) It does approximate matching on the snippet name using a function from subed-word-data.el which just uses string-distance. I could probably duplicate the function in my config, but then I'd have to update it in two places if I come up with more ideas.

The code for inserting into other functions is defined in my-whisper-maybe-type, which is very simple:

(defun my-whisper-maybe-type (text)
  "If Emacs is not the focused app, simulate typing TEXT.
Add this function to `whisper-insert-text-at-point'."
  (when text
    (if (frame-focus-state)
        text
      (make-process :name "xdotool" :command
                    (list "xdotool" "type"
                          text))
      nil)))

Someday I'd like to provide alternative names for snippets. I also want to make it easy to fill in snippet fields by voice. I'd love to be able to answer minibuffer questions from yas-choose-value, yas-completing-read, and other functions by voice too. Could be fun!

This is part of my Emacs configuration.

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You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.