Voice mode misrecognizes German speech as English

Resolved 💬 4 comments Opened Mar 11, 2026 by Am2Dev Closed Mar 11, 2026

Description

Voice mode (/voice, hold Space to record) consistently misrecognizes German speech as English. When speaking German, the transcription produces random English words instead of the actual German content.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Start Claude Code
  2. Run /voice to enable voice mode
  3. Hold Space and speak a German sentence (e.g., "Ich möchte eine Datei erstellen")
  4. Release Space

Expected Behavior

The transcription should recognize the spoken German and produce a German text prompt.

Actual Behavior

The transcription outputs nonsensical English words that don't match what was spoken in German.

Environment

  • OS: Windows (MINGW/Git Bash)
  • Claude Code: latest
  • Language: German (Deutsch)

Possible Cause

The underlying speech-to-text model (likely Whisper) appears to default to English and doesn't correctly detect German as the spoken language.

Suggestion

  • Allow users to configure the voice recognition language (e.g., --language de or a setting in .claude/settings.json)
  • Or improve automatic language detection for non-English languages

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