Not a voice recorder — a dictation app. Tap a key, speak, and clean text lands exactly where your cursor is, in any app. 100% on-device: speech recognition runs on your Apple Silicon chip, so your voice never touches the cloud. No account, no subscription.
Not a recorder
Most "dictation apps" on the Mac are really voice recorders: you talk, you get an audio file, then you still have to transcribe it and paste it somewhere. Dictara skips all of that. The text appears at your cursor the moment you finish speaking — already punctuated, already capitalized, ready to send.
No file, no export, no paste. Tap the right ⌥, speak, tap again — the words drop into the field you are already in.
A sentence appears in a heartbeat; a long thought in seconds. Clean punctuation and capitalization, no cleanup pass.
English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish — recognized automatically as you speak. Switch mid-day, no settings.
Names, jargon, product terms that recognition usually fumbles? Add them once; Dictara fixes them after every dictation.
This simple
Tap the right Option key — in any app, any text field.
One sentence or a whole paragraph. It is processed on your Mac.
Clean text appears at your cursor instantly — offline.
Works everywhere
No plugin, no extra tab, no copy-paste, no Microsoft 365 required for Word. Dictara types into whatever has your cursor — system-wide.
Want the full app-by-app walkthrough? See how to dictate into any app on your Mac →
Why offline matters
Plenty of dictation apps route your voice to a server to transcribe it, then call themselves private because they delete it afterwards. Dictara never sends it in the first place. Speech recognition (NVIDIA Parakeet) runs entirely on your Apple Silicon chip — audio and text stay on the Mac. There is no server holding anything, so there is nothing to leak, hack, subpoena, train on, or sell off.
And there's a reason that matters beyond a Wi-Fi-off plane. Cloud dictation startups are VC-funded and grow on other people's money. Some get huge, some fail — and when one fails, its data becomes part of the bankruptcy estate: an asset, sellable to a third party you never agreed to. In 2025, 23andMe's data on 15 million people went into exactly that kind of auction.
Dictara has no server that could ever fall into a bankruptcy estate. The text stays on your Mac because it was never anywhere else.
| How it transcribes | Dictara | Typical cloud dictation app |
|---|---|---|
| Where your voice is processed | On your Mac (on-device) | Uploaded to a server |
| Works with Wi-Fi off? | Yes | No |
| Account required? | No | Usually yes |
| What's left if the vendor shuts down? | Nothing — nothing sits with a vendor | Your data in their store |
| Cost model | One-time licence (free in Early Access) | Monthly subscription |
As of June 2026. Vendor terms change — verify before deciding.
If privacy is your reason for going offline, read the deeper case for private transcription with no cloud →
Questions
No. Dictara is a dictation app, not a recorder. You tap a key, speak, and clean text appears directly at your cursor in whatever app you're using — Mail, Word, Slack, a browser. There's no file to export and re-type. It can also record and transcribe a meeting when you want, but the core job is text at the cursor.
Yes. Speech recognition (NVIDIA Parakeet) runs on-device on your Apple Silicon chip. Audio and text never leave the Mac — not even the transcription. The only network contact is an optional, anonymous version check; never content. You can dictate on a plane with Wi-Fi off.
Any app with a text field. Dictara types where your cursor is, so it works in Mail, Word and Pages, Slack, Notion, ChatGPT, VS Code and Cursor, browsers — everywhere. No plugin, no extension, no copy-paste.
Around 30× real-time, with automatic punctuation and capitalization. It detects your language automatically across English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Polish, and you can teach it special words — names, jargon, product terms — that it then fixes after every dictation.
No account, no email, no login. Download DictaraOffline.dmg, drag to install, start talking. It's free during Early Access; afterwards a one-time licence per machine — no subscription, no hour packs, no recurring cost.
Download Dictara and dictate for free — 100% offline, across your whole Mac. Your words stay on your device.
Notarized by Apple · no account · free in Early Access · Made in Germany 🇩🇪
~2.4 GB · all models built in (no download on first launch) · drag to install · macOS 12+, Apple Silicon · all features →