How it works
Hold. Speak. Release.
Five things happen between your voice and your document — all of them on your Mac. Privacy isn’t a setting here; it’s the architecture.
System status
- Speed
- Under a second
- Processing
- On-device
- Data flow
- Never leaves your Mac
- 01
Hold your trigger
A keyboard shortcut (⌥ Space by default) or a mouse side button. You choose it in setup, and you can bind several.
- 02
Speak naturally
Ums, pauses, half-thoughts — talk like a human. A small floating pill shows it’s listening, with a live waveform.
- 03
Release
In under a second, your words are transcribed on your Mac’s Neural Engine — no internet round-trip.
- 04
It tidies as it types
Fillers removed, punctuation and capitalisation added, “one… two…” becomes a real numbered list, your custom words spelt right.
- 05
Text lands at your cursor
In whatever app is focused — browser, email, Slack, code editor, terminal. No plugins, no per-app setup.
Plain English
What “on-device” actually means
Works on a plane
First run downloads a speech model (about 1 GB) once. After that, no internet is needed — or used.
Never stored, never sent
Your audio is processed entirely on the Mac’s Neural Engine. Transcripts live in a local history you control — export it or clear it whenever you like.
No server, by design
There’s no server because there’s nothing to send. This isn’t a policy promise — it’s the architecture.
The setup
Ninety seconds, start to dictating
A short wizard walks you through each permission and explains, in plain English, why it’s needed — then lets you try your first dictation before it closes.
Microphone
So it can hear you. Audio never leaves this Mac.
Accessibility
So it can type for you — macOS calls apps that type on your behalf an Accessibility permission. That's all it's used for.
Model download
The on-device speech model (~1 GB) downloads once, with a progress bar.
Pick your shortcut
Choose the trigger that suits your hands — keyboard or mouse.
Try it right there
Dictate your first line inside the wizard before you leave it.
Ways to dictate
Your hands, your rules
Press & hold
Hold to talk, release to insert. The default, and the fastest way in.
Toggle / hands-free
Tap to start, tap to stop — for longer passages or resting hands.
Live typing
Watch words form in the document as you speak. Advanced, and part of Pro.
Cancel anytime
Escape throws the dictation away — always, in every mode.
No login. No info gathering.
There is no account because there is nothing to sign in to. No analytics harvest, no email wall, no telemetry. Your voice never leaves your Mac.