Talk mode

• Native macOS/iOS/Android Talk: native speech recognition, Gateway chat, and talk.speak TTS. Apple Speech recognition on macOS/iOS may use network services. Android behavior depends on the installed speech service. Nodes advertise the talk capability and declare which talk.* commands they support.
• iOS Talk (realtime): client-owned WebRTC for OpenAI realtime configs that select webrtc transport or omit transport. This path includes framed and frameless transcript/audio events. Explicit gateway-relay, provider-websocket, and non-OpenAI realtime configs stay on the Gateway-owned relay. Non-realtime configs use the native speech loop.
• Apple Watch standalone Talk: native WebRTC/Opus over UDP with Gateway-owned call control (gateway-control-v1). The Watch uses the Gateway’s configured realtime provider. It keeps tools and transcript ownership on the Gateway. Unsupported configurations fail visibly without a relay fallback.
• Browser Talk: talk.client.create for client-owned webrtc/provider-websocket sessions, or talk.session.create for Gateway-owned gateway-relay sessions. managed-room is reserved for Gateway handoff and walkie-talkie rooms.
• Android Talk (realtime): Android uses Gateway-owned relay realtime when talk.catalog reports the realtime group ready. For supported GPT-Live models, the Gateway advertises relay capability through talk.config, so Android starts talk.session.create instead of native speech recognition and talk.speak. Android never opens a client-owned WebRTC session. Older Gateways without the capability hint and unlisted GPT-Live routes retain native Talk with a visible explanation. Explicit stt-tts mode also stays native. Relay capability is not authentication readiness: catalog and session creation still validate the selected account. Subscription-authenticated Android live audio verification remains pending.
• Transcription-only clients: talk.session.create({ mode: "transcription", transport: "gateway-relay", brain: "none" }), then talk.session.appendAudio and talk.session.close for captions/dictation without an assistant voice response. One-shot uploaded voice notes still use the media understanding audio path.

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Talk documentation pages

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Where each section moved

• Choose a Talk voice from chat
• Session ownership
• Behavior (macOS)
• Behavior (macOS)
• Realtime Talk over the Gateway relay (macOS)
• Realtime Talk over the Gateway relay (macOS)
• When realtime cannot start
• macOS UI
• Apple Watch UI
• Android UI

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Voice directives in replies

{ "voice": "<voice-id>", "once": true }

• First non-empty line only. The JSON line is stripped before TTS playback.
• Unknown keys are ignored.
• once: true applies to the current reply only. Without it, the voice becomes the new Talk mode default.

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Config (~/.openclaw/openclaw.json)

{
  talk: {
    provider: "elevenlabs",
    providers: {
      elevenlabs: {
        voiceId: "<elevenlabs-voice-id>",
        modelId: "eleven_v3",
        outputFormat: "mp3_44100_128",
        apiKey: "<elevenlabs-api-key>",
      },
      mlx: {
        modelId: "mlx-community/Soprano-80M-bf16",
        // Fish S2 Pro can also use a local reference voice:
        // referenceAudioPath: "/Users/example/Voices/reference.wav",
        // referenceText: "Exact transcript of the reference clip.",
      },
      system: {},
    },
    speechLocale: "ru-RU",
    silenceTimeoutMs: 1500,
    interruptOnSpeech: true,
    realtime: {
      provider: "openai",
      providers: {
        openai: {
          apiKey: "<openai-api-key>",
          model: "gpt-realtime-2.1",
          speakerVoice: "cedar",
        },
      },
      instructions: "Speak warmly and keep answers brief.",
      mode: "realtime",
      transport: "webrtc",
      brain: "agent-consult",
    },
  },
}

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Notes

• Native speech recognition requires the platform’s speech and microphone access. Standalone Watch realtime requires microphone access, not local speech recognition.
• Native Talk uses the active Gateway session and only falls back to history polling when response events are unavailable.
• The gateway resolves Talk playback through talk.speak using the active Talk provider. Android falls back to local system TTS only when that RPC is unavailable.
• macOS local MLX playback uses the bundled openclaw-mlx-tts helper when present, or an executable on PATH. Set OPENCLAW_MLX_TTS_BIN to point at a custom helper binary during development. The helper streams PCM, keeps one selected model resident, and supports Fish S2 Pro reference audio through providers.mlx.referenceAudioPath plus referenceText.
• Voice directive value ranges (ElevenLabs): the stability, similarity, and style keys accept 0..1. The speed key accepts 0.5..2. The latency_tier key accepts 0..4.

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Related

• Voice wake
• Audio and voice notes
• Media understanding
• Google Meet plugin
• Media overview — how the media tools fit together