Using Flunkey
Pill, Sounds & Tray
The pill at the bottom of your screen is Flunkey's entire status UI. Learn to read it in seconds.
Pill states
Always-on-top at bottom-center, 44px from the screen edge. When app context is detected (e.g. VS Code, Chrome), a 16×16 app icon appears left of the waveform.
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| Hidden | Idle — Flunkey is listening for hotkeys, nothing recording |
| Listening · F8/F9/F10 | Recording while you hold the hotkey; release to submit |
| Working | Transcribing / waiting on your provider; release already registered |
| Hands-free · confirm/cancel | Double-tap F8 mode: confirm pastes, cancel discards |
What it looks like
The actual pill design, looping through its states — idle bar, recording waveform, hands-free confirm/cancel, working. Purely illustrative.
Sounds
- Start blip — recording began, safe to speak (D5→A5 rising)
- Stop blip — release registered, working on it (G5→C6)
- Cancel — descending tone, nothing pastes
- Confirm — two-tone hands-free acknowledgement
Sounds are synthesized with Web Audio (no files) and initialize on boot. Toasts appear just above the pill for errors: Didn’t catch that, Select some text first, Add an API key, Paste failed — kept in clipboard, Transcription blocked.
If you hear the stop blip but nothing pastes, check provider connectivity and key balance first — see Troubleshooting.
Tray icon
The main window is 860×620 with a custom 32px titlebar (drag, minimize, close-to-tray). The tray menu holds everything: Open Flunkey, Dashboard, Chat History, Transcripts, Transforms, Dictionary, Models & Providers, Analytics, Settings, Quit. Double-click the tray icon to focus; the X button hides to tray instead of quitting. If the icon disappears, Flunkey exited — relaunch it from Start; check “launch at login” in Settings to stop thinking about it.
Open, hide & quit
- Open: tray → Open Flunkey, double-click tray, or Start Menu (autostart launches minimized)
- Hide: X or minimize — hotkeys stay global while hidden
- Quit fully: tray → Quit. This kills the global F8/F9/F10 hook and pill
- Overlay: hold F9 to show, Esc or ✕ to hide; double-tap F9 opens the panel without a new AI turn
- Cancel mid-record: ✕ on the pill or Esc — cancel sound, mic stops, nothing pastes
- Headless: Settings → Show recording indicator OFF hides the pill entirely; flows still work