On-device dictation · macOS · Apple Silicon
privisay runs OpenAI’s Whisper entirely on your Mac. Your audio and the transcript never leave the machine — there is no server, no account, and nothing to subpoena.
One-time purchase · No account · Works offline · 30-day money-back
The risk · what the cloud keeps
The moment you dictate into Otter, a browser tab, or most “AI” note apps, your audio is streamed to a vendor, transcribed on their hardware, and retained under a privacy policy that can change without you. For privileged, NDA-bound, or board-level conversations, that is a record you cannot fully account for.
privisay removes the record entirely. Not by hiding it — by never creating it.
4.2 MB left your Mac · stored on third-party servers
Nothing left your Mac · nothing was stored anywhere
Fig. 2 — Outbound network activity while dictating a single paragraph
Cloud transcription vs. on-device
| Cloud tools | privisay | |
|---|---|---|
| Where your audio goes | To remote servers you don’t own | Nowhere. It stays on your Mac. |
| Account required | Yes — email, login, profile | None. Nothing to create. |
| Works without internet | No | Yes — fully offline |
| Third-party data access | Read the fine print | Zero network requests |
| What you pay | A subscription, renewed forever | $79 once — yours to keep |
| Safe for privileged / NDA work | A standing liability | Yes — nothing leaves the device |
By the numbers · the maker’s own ledger
I built privisay for myself first. In three and a half months of daily use I’ve reclaimed fifty-five hours — roughly a working week and a half — and not one syllable has left my Mac.
Case notes, client memos, long emails, half-formed ideas. The kind of writing where the keyboard is the bottleneck and the cloud is the risk. The tally on the right is from my own machine.
Who this is for · field dispatches
The old choice was typing everything herself or handing attorney–client material to a transcription service. Now she holds ⌘⇧Space, narrates while the testimony is fresh, and the notes land in her brief — on a laptop with the Wi-Fi switched off in the conference room. Nothing to log, nothing to subpoena, nothing to explain to a client.
Every client's tooling review opens with the same question: where does our data go? His dictation app used to be the awkward exception. privisay turns a five-minute status update into ninety seconds of speech, and the honest answer to the data question is finally the simplest one — nowhere. It never leaves his machine.
Doctors, therapists, founders, journalists — anyone writing something they are not ready to share. Two hundred words take five minutes to type and under two to say. Do that a handful of times a day and the week hands back an afternoon, privately.
How it works · three steps, no friction
From any app on your Mac — your editor, your email, a brief, a chat. One shortcut, anywhere.
Talk at your normal pace. Whisper runs on the Neural Engine in real time — roughly three times faster than typing.
Inserted exactly where you were working. No copy-paste, no window to switch to, no upload waiting to finish.
What’s inside · in plain terms
privisay uses OpenAI’s Whisper, the speech technology behind the major transcription services. The only difference is where it runs: on your own Mac, never a server. You set it up once, and from then on it works on a plane, in a meeting, anywhere — with nothing to track, because there is no connection to track it over.
Terms · one price, kept simple
$79once
One payment. No subscription, no account, no renewal — you own it outright. For a tool that hands a professional hours back every week and keeps privileged work off the cloud entirely, the price answers itself.
Set against an hour of your billable time — or the cost of a single exposure — $79 is a rounding error. Paid once, never again.
Questions · on the record, for once
Apple’s built-in dictation sends your audio to Apple’s servers for processing (unless you explicitly enable on-device mode, which has limited language support and lower accuracy). privisay always processes locally using the Whisper AI model, supports 99+ languages, and works completely offline. It also types directly at your cursor in any app — no copy-paste needed.
Yes. privisay never transmits audio or text over the network. Your voice is processed in memory and immediately discarded. There’s no account, no cloud sync, and no telemetry. For professionals handling attorney-client privilege, NDA-protected materials, or sensitive business communications, privisay eliminates the data exposure risk that cloud dictation tools create.
privisay requires an Apple Silicon Mac (M1, M2, M3, or M4) running macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. Intel Macs are not supported.
Your audio is captured in-memory, processed immediately by the on-device Whisper AI model, and discarded right after transcription. No audio is ever written to disk or sent over the network. We have zero access to your voice or transcriptions.
Only once during initial setup to download the AI model (~1.3 GB). After that, privisay works completely offline with no network requests.
Microphone access is required to capture your speech. Accessibility permission is optional but recommended—it allows privisay to type text directly at your cursor. Without it, text is copied to your clipboard instead.
Yes! Your purchase includes a license to use privisay on any Mac computers you personally own or control.
We offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. If privisay doesn’t work for you, contact us for a full refund—no questions asked.
Yes. Unlike Otter.ai and other cloud-based transcription services, privisay processes everything on-device using OpenAI’s Whisper model. Your audio never leaves your Mac, there’s no account to create, and no subscription to manage. It’s a private, local alternative for professionals who can’t risk sending confidential audio to third-party servers.
Yes. privisay is powered by OpenAI’s Whisper speech recognition model, optimized for Apple Silicon via WhisperKit. The model runs entirely on your Mac’s Neural Engine and GPU — no data is sent to OpenAI or any other server. This gives you state-of-the-art transcription accuracy with complete privacy.
Yes. privisay can transcribe meetings, calls, and any spoken audio in real time. Because everything is processed locally on your Mac, your meeting content stays completely private — ideal for confidential client calls, board meetings, and sensitive discussions.
The bottom line
On-device transcription for the work that can’t leave the room. One-time purchase, no account, dictating in under two minutes.