Your words belong to you. Always. No exceptions.
Dictate into any app, meetings cleanly split by speaker, a diary your own AI can read — all 100% on your Mac. Nothing to hack, nothing to subpoena, nothing to sell off. Your voice never leaves this device.
⬇︎ ≈ 2.4 GB — the full offline speech-recognition model is built in, so nothing ever goes to the cloud. One download, done.
Works everywhere
No plugin, no extra tab, no copy-paste. Tap the right ⌥, speak, tap again — clean text lands exactly where your cursor is. Offline, in a heartbeat.
Why Dictara
Tap the right ⌥, speak, tap again: your text appears at the cursor, in any app. Around 30× real-time, with clean punctuation and capitalization. Language (EN/DE/FR/IT/ES/PL) detected automatically.
If a recording runs over a minute, Dictara checks whether it’s a conversation. If it is, it splits the recording by speaker — locally. Voice ID learns voices: yours from your dictations, colleagues after you name them once. No bot in the call.
Company names, product names, jargon, proper nouns that recognition usually fumbles: add your special words once, and Dictara fixes them automatically after every dictation.
Every dictation and meeting as Markdown on your drive, one folder per day. Calendar view, full-text search, stats (words, pace, top apps). No lock-in — your files, your format, optionally in your Dropbox.
Entirely optional: if you like, your own AI (Claude Cowork or Codex) reads your diary and writes a daily report plus a growing knowledge base of the people in your life — view, edit or delete anytime. Dictara uploads nothing itself; if you bring in the AI, it runs through your own account at Anthropic or OpenAI — soon public companies where strong privacy is mandatory.
Audio is saved to disk every second. Crash, dead battery, sleep? Dictara restores it automatically on restart. Self-healing — not a word is lost.
This simple
Tap the right Option key.
One sentence or a three-hour meeting. Nothing lost.
Clean text appears at your cursor instantly — offline.
Meetings
Hit record before your call or stand-up. Dictara detects the conversation automatically, cleanly separates who said what, and drops the transcript as Markdown into your diary — or pushes it straight to your cursor. All on your Mac, nothing in the cloud. Nobody in the call knows you’ve got cleaner notes than they do.
Every line tagged to its speaker, automatically. Skim a 90-minute meeting in 90 seconds.
No “Dictara has joined the call.” Nobody on the invite, nothing for IT to approve. Just you and your Mac.
Saved every second. Even if the Mac sleeps, your recording is safe and restored on restart.
Your archive
Every dictation and every meeting lands in a private diary on your Mac — sorted by day, browsable in a month view: texts, meetings, audio, each in its place. As Markdown, in your folder, optionally in your Dropbox. Point Claude Cowork or Codex at the folder and put a month of your own words to work:
Privacy
Other dictation and meeting tools sell you security checklists because they hold on to everything you say. Dictara flips that: speech recognition (NVIDIA Parakeet) and speaker separation run entirely on your Apple Silicon chip. Audio and text never leave the device — not even the transcription. There’s no server holding anything. So there’s nothing to leak, hack, subpoena, train on — or liquidate.
Cloud AI 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. Not a great feeling, knowing your dictated emails, contracts and thoughts could one day belong to someone as an asset.
And it’s not only your data — the tool dies with the company. When a cloud service shuts down, the servers go dark and you’re locked out overnight. Dictara runs on your Mac: download it once and it keeps working forever — even if Dictara itself one day disappears. No subscription, no kill switch, nobody who can switch it off.
Dictara has no server that could ever fall into a bankruptcy estate. Your words are your capital — and they’re nobody else’s business.
Recognition, speaker separation, special words, diary, AI insights: all on-device. No asterisk, no exception.
No email, no login, no calendar access. There’s simply no profile to leak.
The only network contact: an optional, anonymous version check. Never content.
Built by CW Apps GmbH in Berlin, where data protection is culture, not a footnote.
For confidential professions
Cloud dictation isn’t outright illegal for confidential professions — but you have to bind each provider to confidentiality in writing, brief them on criminal liability, select carefully, monitor continuously, and for US providers prove a comparable level of protection (which a US tool essentially never can). Local processing makes that entire compliance burden moot — because the disclosure that triggers the law never happens.
Your client privilege never leaves your desk. Attorney-client confidentiality can’t be delegated away by any cloud contract — a data-processing agreement covers privacy law, not criminal liability. With Dictara: no disclosure, no processor, nothing a seizure or a bankruptcy estate could ever reach.
What your patient confides stays between you and your Mac. Clinical notes are the highest-sensitivity health data, and your duty of confidentiality can’t be contracted away. Dictara transcribes fully offline: no upload, no Business Associate to vet, no breach surface, no PHI leaving the device.
Source protection starts at the dictation tool — not in the courtroom. Your reporter’s privilege is worthless if your interview recording sits with a cloud provider who can be forced to hand it over. Dictara records and transcribes on your Mac — your recordings and your sources stay in your possession. No server to subpoena.
This is a general risk overview, not legal advice.
How it compares
| Dictara | Wispr Flow | superwhisper | MacWhisper | Otter | Fireflies | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data location | 100% local | Cloud | local possible, cloud key for cleanup | local | Cloud | Cloud |
| Account needed? | No | Yes | for cloud modes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Model | One-time licence (free in Early Access) | Subscription (~$15/mo) | Subscription or lifetime | One-time (from €59) | Subscription | Subscription |
| If the vendor goes bankrupt, your data… | Nothing — nothing sits with the vendor | Cloud store = potential bankruptcy estate | local data untouched | Nothing | Cloud store = potential bankruptcy estate | Cloud store = potential bankruptcy estate |
| Bot in the call? | No | — | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Funding | CW Apps GmbH, self-funded | VC (~$81M) | Indie | Indie | VC (~$40M) | VC |
| Dictation + meetings + diary + your own AI? | All of it | dictation only | dictation only | file transcripts only | meetings only | meetings only |
As of June 2026. Vendor terms change — verify before deciding.
Wispr Flow has a “Privacy Mode” — and it’s off by default. With Dictara, privacy isn’t a toggle, it’s the architecture. There’s no cloud for us to keep your words in.
The model
The Offline Edition runs entirely on your Mac — no metered usage, no hour packs, no recurring cost. During Early Access, Dictara is free. After that: a one-time licence per machine, no subscription, no auto-renewal, nothing to cancel. You buy once — and it stays yours.
Planned at around €149 (≈ 10 months of Wispr — but once, not monthly). Early-Access users get half off.
DictaraOffline.dmg · ~2.4 GB, all models built in — no download on first launch · drag to install · notarized by Apple · macOS 12+, Apple Silicon.
Questions
Yes. Speech recognition (NVIDIA Parakeet) and speaker separation run on-device on your Apple Silicon chip. Audio and text never leave the device — not even the transcription. The only network contact is an optional, anonymous version check; never content.
They stay on your drive, as Markdown in your diary folder. There’s no server anything gets uploaded to — so nothing that could be leaked, seized, or become part of a bankruptcy estate.
No. No email, no login, no calendar access. Download DictaraOffline.dmg, drag to install, start talking.
Yes. Recordings over a minute are auto-detected as conversations and split by speaker — locally, no bot in the call, no invite, no shared recording. It’s your personal record.
No. Insights use your own AI (Claude Cowork or Codex), which reads your local logbook on-device. Nothing is uploaded.
Local processing means no disclosure under confidentiality law, no data processor, no third-country transfer for your dictation. The risky step simply never happens. (This is a general risk overview, not legal advice.)
Free while it’s in Early Access — and you keep that free access, no time pressure. When a paid licence comes later, it’s a one-time price per Mac, no subscription: planned at around €149. That’s about what 10 months of a Wispr subscription costs — except you pay it once and never again. Join now and you get half off (~€75, roughly 5 months of Wispr), and then it’s yours for good. No surprise bills.
macOS 12 or newer, Apple Silicon. The .dmg (~2.4 GB) ships with all models built in — no download on first launch. Notarized by Apple.
Download Dictara and dictate for free — 100% offline, across your whole Mac. Your words stay yours.
Notarized by Apple · no account · free in Early Access · Made in Germany 🇩🇪