The aim of installation is a clean speaking session that you can test before changing your personal Emacs setup. Choose the route for the machine running Emacs. A Debian package is suitable when your distribution provides the required Emacs and Transient. The source checkout supports GNU/Linux, macOS, and WSL2. Native Windows uses its own Windows installation procedure. If speech will play on another workstation, use Installing Remote Emacsvox instead of installing a local speech server.
The settings-menu instructions in this development manual describe
ui-experiments. Use a checkout of that branch to follow them; an older
release package may not contain the same interface. Keep an existing working
installation available while testing a development checkout.
Commands shown before Emacsvox starts are entered in a terminal. Keys written with C- or M- are entered inside Emacs. The published installation chapter is also available before installation at https://bartbunting.github.io/emacsvox/Installation.html; its published version may differ from this development branch.
Emacsvox 2026.9.2 predates Debian packaging. Use a package from a release that includes one, or a locally built development package. Omnivox 1.18.0 includes an amd64 deb for supported Ubuntu systems.
With a downloaded Emacsvox deb, install it using apt:
sudo apt install ./emacsvox_VERSION_all.deb emacsvox --diagnose emacsvox --check emacsvox
Replace VERSION with the version in the downloaded filename. Apt requires
a packaged Emacs 30.2 or newer; an installed terminal-only emacs-nox also
satisfies this dependency. Settings menus also require Transient 0.13.3 or
newer. Apt installs elpa-transient when a packaged Emacs 31.1 or newer does
not already supply it. Ubuntu 26.10 supplies both dependencies. Ubuntu 26.04’s
stock Transient is too old; use the source installation route below and upgrade
Transient through Emacs’s package manager. The package never builds GNU Emacs
or adds an apt repository to resolve missing dependencies. If your distribution
also lacks a supported Emacs, the source route offers an explicit Emacs 31 build.
Use Omnivox 1.18.0 or newer for the Omnivox route documented here. If it is
unavailable from your apt repositories, include its downloaded deb in the same
apt command, or select an existing installation. Confirm both tone and speech
from emacsvox --check before starting the session.
For remote Emacs or WSL with an existing Windows speech server, use
sudo apt install --no-install-recommends ./emacsvox_VERSION_all.deb.
Remote sessions start with emacsvox --remote after the workstation service,
token and tunnel are prepared as described in
Installing Remote Emacsvox. The package does not acquire a Windows speech
runtime; the guided WSL source installer below handles that.
Emacsvox installs under /usr/share/emacsvox, with the command
/usr/bin/emacsvox. It includes Lisp sources, sounds and offline manuals.
No personal initialisation is changed and ordinary Emacs sessions do not
automatically start speaking. To enable Emacsvox in your own Emacs setup, add
(load-file "/usr/share/emacsvox/lisp/emacsvox-setup.el") explicitly.
Upgrade the system tree using apt; the source build instructions below apply
to checkouts. Removing the package preserves personal settings and speech
tokens. Package details are in /usr/share/doc/emacsvox/README.Debian.