How to dictate privately on a Mac or PC

Last updated 11 October 2026

The three places a setup leaks

Assume you have already chosen an on-device app. Most of what is left goes wrong in the same three places, in descending order of how often we see it.

1. The rewriting step. Recognition is local; the clean-up is a cloud API call. The text of your confidential dictation is transmitted. Check the default and check whether cloud transforms are labelled.
2. The local history. Your dictations, often with audio, sitting on the disk for months. Fine on an encrypted personal machine; not fine on a shared one.
3. Where you dictated it. On-device recognition protects the audio in transit. It does nothing about the fact that you then typed it into a system someone else runs.

The setup, in order

1. Choose an app that recognises on-device VV (on Mac and Windows), VoiceInk, Superwhisper, MacWhisper or macOS's own on Apple silicon. The shortlist with sources is at best private dictation apps for Mac.
2. Prove it with the network off Aeroplane mode, dictate a sentence. Text means local. Do this yourself rather than trusting a page, including this one.
3. Now test the rewriting with the network still off The step most people skip. If the tidy-up fails offline, it is a cloud call and your text is going somewhere.
4. Set history retention to something you can defend Long retention is genuinely useful for recovering a lost dictation. On a machine other people use, or one that travels, shorten it. Decide deliberately rather than accepting a default.
5. Turn on disk encryption Mac: System Settings → Privacy & Security → FileVault. Windows: BitLocker, or Device encryption under Settings → Privacy & security where the PC offers it. This protects the local history whatever your app does, and it is the highest-value item on this list. It is also free.
6. Check what leaves for licensing and updates A private dictation app can still phone home for a licence check. That is normal and carries no content, but you should know it happens and be able to say so if asked.

What on-device dictation does not protect you from

Being precise here is the difference between a defensible position and a false sense of security.

• The destination. Dictating a confidential note into a cloud document puts it in that cloud document. The dictation was private; the destination is not.
• A managed Mac or PC. Corporate monitoring software sees what is on the machine. Local dictation does not hide anything from your employer's endpoint tooling.
• Being overheard. The most under-rated risk by a distance. You are speaking aloud. In an open-plan office, a café or a train, a local model protects the file and not the sentence.
• An unencrypted disk. Without FileVault or BitLocker, the local history is readable by anyone who has the machine.
• Backups. Your history is on the disk, so it is in your backups. Whether that matters depends on where the backups go.

If someone else has to sign this off

Write down what you can demonstrate rather than what you believe. A short note along these lines survives a security review much better than a vendor's marketing page:

• Recognition runs on the endpoint. Verified on date by dictating with networking disabled.
• Transcripts and audio are retained locally for n days, at path, on an encrypted disk (FileVault or BitLocker).
• Cloud rewriting is disabled. Verified by testing the rewrite offline.
• The app contacts vendor for licence validation and updates; no dictation content is included.
• No certifications are claimed by the vendor.

That last line is the one people leave out. We hold no certifications and say so on our security page — if your process requires one, an on-device architecture will not substitute for it. See dictation for confidential work.