What actually happens when you dictate
Two steps, and only one of them can ever touch the network:
ON YOUR MACYou hold the key and speak. Audio is captured and transcribed locally — Whisper or NVIDIA Parakeet, running through Core ML on Apple silicon. No account. No upload. This step never needs the network.
YOUR CHOICEAn optional cleanup pass removes fillers and false starts and fixes punctuation. By default this calls an AI model in the cloud — but you can turn it off, bring your own API key, or use a local model. Switched off, the raw transcript is what you get, and nothing leaves the Mac at all.
The honest line
Plainsay's
transcription is guaranteed local. The one optional step that can leave the Mac — cleanup — is
your choice, not locked to one vendor's cloud. We don't claim “100% offline,” because if you leave cloud cleanup on, that one step isn't. We tell you exactly where the line is, and you decide where to draw it.
Why it's worth it
- Privacy that isn't a checkbox. Your voice is often the most sensitive thing you type — passwords read aloud, medical notes, half-formed ideas, other people's names. When transcription is local, that audio never becomes someone else's server log, training set, or breach.
- It's faster. No round trip to a data center and back. On Apple silicon, a short dictation is transcribed in a fraction of the time an upload alone would take — and it works the same on a plane, a train, or a bad hotel Wi-Fi.
- It works offline. A cloud dictation app is a paperweight without a connection. Local transcription doesn't care.
- No lock-in. Whisper or Parakeet for transcription; your choice of provider (or none) for cleanup. Nothing is hard-wired to one AI vendor's pricing or availability.
- No meter running. Local dictation is free and unmetered — no per-word caps, no monthly subscription for the core function.
You don't have to take our word for it
A closed cloud app can promise anything in a privacy policy. Plainsay's entire client is MIT licensed and public — you, or anyone you trust, can read exactly what it does with your audio: where it goes, when it goes anywhere, and what happens if you turn cleanup off. There is no hidden telemetry and nothing phones home. If that mattered enough to read this page, it's worth reading the source.
github.com/conrader/plainsay — the whole thing, every line
The contrast, in one sentence
Tools like Wispr Flow state plainly that “transcription always happens in the cloud” — every word leaves your device by design. Plainsay flips the default: local first, cloud only for the one optional step you control. See the full comparison →
Keep your voice on your Mac.
Download for macOS
Free · MIT licensed · macOS 15+, Apple silicon