Private, on-device AI dictation with no cloud
Private, on-device AI dictation means both the speech-to-text and the optional AI cleanup run on your own Mac, so nothing is uploaded. OpenWhisp does this: it transcribes with WhisperKit locally and can refine your text with a small AI model that lives on your disk — no account, no server, no cloud.
“AI dictation” usually means your voice, and often your text, goes to someone else’s servers. For anyone handling sensitive material, that’s a non-starter. The alternative is dictation where every step runs on your own machine — and in 2026 that’s fully practical on a Mac.
What “on-device” actually covers
- Transcription: the speech-to-text model runs locally (OpenWhisp uses WhisperKit on the Apple Neural Engine), so your audio never leaves the Mac.
- AI cleanup: the optional rewrite pass runs on a small open-weights model that OpenWhisp downloads to your disk — no API key, no server, nothing uploaded.
How OpenWhisp keeps it private
- Audio is recorded locally and the recording is deleted after each transcription.
- The default AI cleanup runs on the built-in on-device model — text stays on your Mac.
- The only time anything leaves your machine is if you deliberately choose the OpenAI provider instead.
- Selected-text editing reads via the Accessibility API and never touches secure or password fields.
Who this is for
If you work in law, medicine, finance, or just prefer your words to stay yours, on-device AI dictation removes the cloud from the equation entirely. It’s also free and open source in OpenWhisp’s case, so you can verify the privacy claims in the code rather than taking them on faith.
Related: dictate on a Mac completely offline and edit text by voice.
Frequently asked questions
- Can AI dictation run entirely on my Mac?
- Yes. OpenWhisp transcribes with WhisperKit on-device and can run its AI cleanup on a small model stored on your disk, so both steps happen locally with nothing sent to the cloud.
- Does private dictation need an account or API key?
- No. OpenWhisp works with no account and no API key. The optional cloud provider (OpenAI) is the only thing that would need a key, and it's off by default.
- How do I know my dictation is actually private?
- OpenWhisp is open source, so you can read exactly how it handles audio and text. Audio is deleted after each transcription and transcripts are never written to log files.
Try OpenWhisp
Free, open source, and 100% on-device dictation for Apple Silicon Macs.