Offline dictation for Mac Hold a key. Speak.
Your words appear.
Dictate types what you say at the cursor, in any app. Speech is transcribed on your Mac by NVIDIA Parakeet — no internet, no account, nothing sent to the cloud.
Free during early access · v1.3.0 · Apple Silicon Mac · macOS 14 Sonoma or later
- 0bytes of audio uploaded
- ~90 msto transcribe on an M1
- 21languages, auto-detected
- 0accounts, subscriptions, trackers
How it works
One key does everything. No window to open, no mode to switch.
Hold your key
Right Option by default, or any key you choose — F18 on a custom keyboard, a different key on each keyboard you plug in.
Speak naturally
A small waveform shows Dictate is listening. Pause, think, carry on — there is no time limit while you hold the key.
Release
The text is pasted at your cursor in whatever app you are in: mail, Slack, your editor, a terminal. It stays on the clipboard too.
What stays on your Mac
Everything you say. Dictate records, transcribes and inserts text entirely on your Mac, so it works on a plane, in a basement, or on a network you don't trust. Here is every time it touches the internet.
Details on the privacy page.
- dictation
Never. Audio and text stay on your Mac. Recordings aren't kept.
- first launch
Downloads the speech model (about 600 MB) from Hugging Face, once.
- daily
Checks for app updates. The request carries the app version — no audio, text or identifiers.
- opt-in
Claude cleanup: if you have Claude Code installed and switch this on, longer dictations are sent to Anthropic for polishing. Off by default.
Dictate compared
Published facts only, as of September 2026.
| Dictate | Apple Dictation | Wispr Flow | Superwhisper | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Works offline | Yes | Yes, on Apple Silicon | No | Yes, with local models |
| Where speech is processed | On your Mac (Parakeet) | On-device on Apple Silicon for supported languages | Cloud — audio is sent to their servers | Local models, plus optional cloud models |
| Price | Free in early access; one-time purchase later | Free, built into macOS | $15/month, or $144/year | $8.49/month, $84.99/year, or $249.99 lifetime |
| Hold any key to talk | Yes, per keyboard | Shortcut to start and stop | Yes | Yes |
Competitor pricing from each vendor's pricing page, September 2026.
Switching? Read Dictate vs Wispr Flow or Dictate vs Superwhisper.
Small on purpose
A menu bar icon, one settings window, and a key. That's the whole app.
- Per-keyboard keys
- Right Option on the laptop, F18 on your split keyboard. Dictate switches as you plug in.
- Substitutions
- Teach it the names and jargon it mishears once; it fixes them every time after.
- Language detection
- English, then Danish, then German. Parakeet notices; you don't change a setting.
- Fast from the first word
- About 90 ms to transcribe on an M1 (median, our 20-clip benchmark), warmed up at launch.
- Pauses your music
- Spotify pauses while you talk and resumes when you let go.
- Updates itself
- Signed, notarized updates install in the background. Install once.
21 languages, detected automatically
Latin-script European languages supported by NVIDIA Parakeet TDT v3. Switch between them from one sentence to the next.
- English
- Croatian
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- Estonian
- Finnish
- French
- German
- Hungarian
- Italian
- Latvian
- Lithuanian
- Maltese
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Slovak
- Slovenian
- Spanish
- Swedish
Questions
Something missing? The privacy page covers every connection the app makes.
Does Dictate work offline?
Yes. After a one-time download of the speech model (about 600 MB), dictation works with no internet connection at all. Your audio is recorded, transcribed and turned into text on your Mac, and never leaves it.
How can I check that nothing is sent over the internet?
Turn Wi-Fi off and dictate — it works exactly the same. If you run a network monitor such as Little Snitch or LuLu, you will see that Dictate makes no connections while you dictate. The only connections it ever makes are listed on the privacy page: the model download, a daily update check, and the optional Claude cleanup, which is off by default.
What dictation apps work offline on a Mac?
Apple's built-in Dictation works on-device on Apple Silicon Macs for supported languages, and several third-party apps run their speech model locally: Dictate, Superwhisper (with its local models), VoiceInk and others. Cloud tools such as Wispr Flow need an internet connection. We make Dictate, so weigh our view accordingly — the comparison below sticks to published facts.
How is Dictate different from Apple Dictation?
Both can run on-device. Dictate is built for holding a key while you talk: any key can be the activation key, each keyboard can have its own, releasing the key inserts the text, and word substitutions fix names and jargon the model keeps getting wrong (for example "clawed code" → "Claude Code"). It uses NVIDIA's Parakeet model, which detects which of its 21 languages you are speaking without switching settings.
Which languages does Dictate support?
21 European languages: English, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish. The language is detected automatically, so you can dictate in English and then in Danish without changing anything.
Which Macs does it run on?
Macs with Apple Silicon (M1 or later) running macOS 14 Sonoma or later, with current updates installed. The speech model runs on the Neural Engine, which Intel Macs don't have.
How much does Dictate cost?
Dictate is free to download during early access. A paid version will be a one-time purchase — no subscription.
Do I need an account?
No. There is no sign-up, no account and no analytics. Download it, grant microphone and accessibility access, and start talking.
Try it on your next email
Free during early access. Apple Silicon Mac · macOS 14 Sonoma or later.