Offline dictation for Mac
Hold Fn, speak, let go, paste with ⌘V. Whisperer turns your voice into text on your Mac in 97 languages, and your voice never goes to a server.
$2.99 once on the Mac App Store. Apple Silicon, macOS 26 Tahoe.
Why dictate offline
Most dictation apps send your audio to the cloud to transcribe it. Whisperer does the work on your Mac's own chip.
- Nothing to leak
- Your voice is never uploaded, so there is nothing on a server to be breached, logged or used for training.
- Works anywhere
- On a plane, on bad hotel Wi-Fi, in a building with no signal.
- No account
- No sign-up, no analytics, no tracking. The App Store lists Data Not Collected.
- Nothing metered
- No words-per-week cap and no minute limit. Dictate as much as you like.
Four engines on your Mac
Whisper is the default: the Whisperer V3 model on the Metal GPU, 97 languages. Parakeet, Qwen3 ASR and WhisperKit are there if you want to try another.
Default. About 547 MB. All engines run on this Mac. Nothing is sent to a server.
Whisperer, Apple Dictation and cloud apps
Apple Dictation is free and good for short bursts. Cloud apps are polished but send your voice away. Here is where Whisperer sits.
| Whisperer | Apple Dictation | Cloud dictation apps | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where speech is turned into text | On your Mac | On your Mac for many languages | Their servers |
| Works with Wi-Fi off | Yes | Partly | No |
| Languages | 97 with Whisper | Apple's list | Varies |
| Choice of engine | Five | One | One |
| Learns your words | Yes, from your corrections | No | Some do |
| History and file transcription | Yes | No | Some do |
| Price | $2.99 once | Free | Usually monthly |
What you need
A recent Mac and a few hundred megabytes of disk. The model downloads the first time you dictate.
- Mac
- Apple Silicon (M1 or later)
- macOS
- macOS 26 Tahoe
- Default model
- Whisperer V3, about 547 MB
- Permissions
- Microphone
- Account
- None
- Price
- $2.99 once
Meetings can stay offline too
Whisperer Pro ($14.99 once) adds meeting notes. Calls in Zoom, Teams and Meet are recorded and transcribed on your Mac, speakers are told apart on your Mac, and the built-in Qwen3.5 4B model can write the summary and action items without a connection.
If you would rather use Claude or ChatGPT for notes, you can. Only the text transcript goes to them, never the audio, and any single meeting can be kept local. See meeting notes.
Offline dictation questions
Dictate with the Wi-Fi off
Whisperer is $2.99 once. Pro adds meetings, your own AI and MCP for $14.99 once. No subscription.