Offline dictation on Mac: transcribe without the cloud

Offline dictation means the speech model runs on your Mac and your voice never leaves it. There are two ways to get that on a Mac today, and they differ in how sure you can be about where the audio goes.

Does Apple's built-in Dictation work offline?

It depends on your Mac and your language. Apple's privacy page for Siri and Dictation says your device will indicate in Keyboard settings if your audio and transcripts are processed on the device and not sent to Apple servers. If that note is not there, what you dictate is sent to Apple and processed on the server. Apple says it is not stored unless you opt in to Improve Siri and Dictation.

Apple's feature availability page lists on-device Dictation for 49 language variants, and notes that it requires a download of speech models.

So the honest answer is "check". Open System Settings > Keyboard and read what it says under Dictation for the language you use.

A warning about what you will find when you search this. Some pages claim Apple removed offline dictation and that everything is server-based now. That contradicts Apple's current pages linked above.

How does a local dictation app work offline?

A local app downloads a speech recognition model to your disk once, then runs it on your Mac's own chip every time you dictate. Nothing about the recognition step needs a network after that.

The two model families you will see most are OpenAI's Whisper and NVIDIA's Parakeet. Both are openly published. Apps convert them to a format that runs well on Apple Silicon. Whisper vs Parakeet explains how to choose between them.

Here is what happens in Gabble when you hold the dictation key:

1. The microphone audio is recorded into memory. It is not written to disk.
2. When you release the key, the model transcribes the audio on the Mac through Core ML.
3. On-device text cleanup removes ums and repeated words and fixes capitals and spacing. This is the default Clean mode.
4. The text is pasted into the app in front, and your clipboard is restored.

No step in that list touches the network.

What do you need to download?

You need one model, and you pick it by size, language and accuracy. Gabble downloads models from Hugging Face the first time you select them.

That first download is the only time speech recognition needs a connection.

How do you set up offline dictation with Gabble?

It takes one download and two permissions.

1. Download Gabble. It needs an Apple Silicon Mac on macOS 14 or later. There is no account to create.
2. Grant Microphone and Accessibility when asked. Accessibility lets Gabble see the dictation key and paste into other apps.
3. Wait for the default model to download.
4. Turn off Wi-Fi if you want to prove it to yourself.
5. Click into a text field, hold Right Option, say a sentence, and release.

If the text shows up with Wi-Fi off, you have offline dictation.

What about AI cleanup? Does that stay offline too?

It stays offline only if you choose a local provider. AI cleanup in Gabble is optional and off by default, so out of the box nothing is sent anywhere.

If you turn it on, you choose where the transcript text goes:

In every case only the transcript text is sent. Audio is never sent. If an AI mode is selected but no provider is configured, Gabble falls back to the on-device Clean mode.

To keep the whole pipeline on your Mac, follow clean up dictation with a local LLM.

What are the trade-offs of going local?

You trade some convenience for control. Be clear-eyed about what you give up.

• Disk space. A model takes between 77 MB and about 650 MB.
• Hardware. Gabble needs Apple Silicon. It does not run on Intel Macs.
• No live text. Gabble shows the text after you stop speaking, not while you talk.
• One platform. There is no Windows or iOS version, so nothing syncs to a phone.

Cloud dictation services make the opposite trade. Wispr Flow, for example, states that its transcription always happens in the cloud (privacy page) and that an internet connection is required (system requirements). In return it runs on Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. See Gabble vs Wispr Flow for the side-by-side.

Can you transcribe files offline too?

Yes. Drop an audio or video file onto Gabble's Files tab and it produces a transcript with the same on-device model. It does not label speakers and it does not record meetings for you. It turns a file you already have into text.

For the reasoning behind keeping all of this local, read why your dictation app shouldn't need the cloud.

Frequently asked questions

Does Mac dictation work offline?

Sometimes. Apple processes dictation on the device for supported Macs and languages and says Keyboard settings will tell you when that is the case. Otherwise your audio is sent to Apple's servers.

How do I dictate on a Mac without internet?

Either confirm in Keyboard settings that Apple's Dictation is processed on device for your language, or install an app that runs a local speech model. Gabble needs a connection once to download a model, then works offline.

Does Gabble upload my audio?

No. Gabble recognises speech on the Mac through Core ML. Audio is held in memory, never written to disk and never uploaded.

Does AI cleanup work offline?

It does if you use Ollama on the same Mac. If you use your own Anthropic or OpenAI-compatible API key instead, the transcript text is sent to that provider, but the audio never is.

How much disk space does offline dictation need?

In Gabble the models range from about 77 MB for Whisper Tiny to about 646 MB for Whisper Large v3 Turbo. The default, Parakeet v3, is about 480 MB.

Can I transcribe an audio file offline on a Mac?

Yes. In Gabble you drop an audio or video file onto the Files tab and get a transcript, using the same on-device model as dictation.