Dictation on a Mac without internet

At a glance

Name	Offline dictation	Local engines	Price
Speakey	Yes, always	Parakeet, Qwen3-ASR, Whisper, Apple	FreePaid onceFree plan; Pro $4.99 once
macOS Dictation	On-device languages only	Apple	FreeFree
Superwhisper	Yes (local models)	Whisper free; Parakeet in Pro	FreeMonthlyFree; Pro $8.49/mo
VoiceInk	Yes (local models)	Parakeet, Whisper, more	Paid onceFrom $25 once
Wispr Flow	Not listed	Not listed	FreeMonthlyFree tier; Pro $15/mo

Why offline matters

Offline dictation is about more than flights and bad hotel Wi-Fi. If speech is turned into text on your Mac, the recording never goes to a server, so there is nothing to store, leak or train on. It is also faster in practice, because there is no network round trip, and it keeps working when a service has an outage.

Apple silicon made this realistic. The Neural Engine in every M-series chip runs speech models at a fraction of the power a GPU would use, so a laptop can transcribe locally without the fans spinning up.

macOS Dictation

Apple's Dictation is free and built in. Whether it runs on your Mac depends on the language. Apple's feature availability page has a separate list for on-device dictation, which needs a speech model download. Languages on that list work offline; others are sent to Apple. Apple's own help page tells you to look in Keyboard settings for a note that your input is "processed on your device and not sent to Siri servers".

Apple also has an enhanced on-device model with better spelling, punctuation and capitalization, but it is English only and needs an M3 or later with at least 12 GB of memory. Indonesian is listed for Dictation but not for on-device dictation, so Indonesian speakers can't use it offline.

Third-party apps that transcribe locally

Speakey's Dictate mode never uses the network. Each engine is downloaded once (Parakeet 492 MB, Qwen3-ASR 1.1 GB, Whisper Turbo about 1.5 GB, Whisper Compact 547 MB) and compiled for the Neural Engine on first use, about 11 seconds for Parakeet and about a minute for Whisper. After that you can switch Wi-Fi off. Everyday Agent commands like opening an app or moving a window also run locally. Rewrite and Agent's AI answers do need internet, because they go through your own Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini account.

Superwhisper's free plan includes unlimited dictation with local Whisper models, and its docs say nothing you dictate leaves your device on that plan. VoiceInk says it processes all transcription locally, with optional cloud models you can pick. MacWhisper runs Whisper locally and also offers cloud services if you add API keys. Wispr Flow's pricing page doesn't say whether it works offline.

How the on-device engines differ

Most local dictation apps on the Mac are built on the same handful of open models. Knowing them helps you pick, whichever app you use.

• Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 (NVIDIA): very fast and punctuates well, 25 European languages. In Speakey's tests on an M5 Max it finished English takes in 40 ms at the median. It garbles languages it wasn't trained on, including Indonesian.
• Whisper Large v3 Turbo (OpenAI): about 99 languages with punctuation in each. Slower: around 360 to 650 ms a take on the same Mac, more on older chips.
• Qwen3-ASR 0.6B (Qwen): about 30 languages including Indonesian and Chinese. Fast, but writes Indonesian mostly lowercase without punctuation. Speakey runs it from macOS 15.
• Apple Speech: built in, no download from the app. On macOS 26 the newer SpeechAnalyzer handles languages whose model is installed; older languages fall back to the previous recognizer.

Check it yourself in two minutes

• Download the model while you're online, then dictate one sentence so it finishes compiling.
• Turn Wi-Fi off and unplug Ethernet.
• Dictate into a text editor. If words appear, transcription is local.
• For a stricter check, a firewall app that shows outgoing connections should show nothing from the dictation app while you speak.

What to pick

If you only dictate in English or another language on Apple's on-device list, macOS Dictation costs nothing and works offline. If your language isn't on that list, or you want a hold-to-talk key, a live preview and a choice of engines, use a local app. Speakey picks the engine from your languages and your Mac, and it is free up to 2,000 words a week, or $4.99 once for Pro.

Questions