Clarify for Mac
Offline dictation on Mac: speech to text that stays on your computer.
Offline dictation means your Mac turns speech into text itself, so your voice is never uploaded. Here is what that gets you, how Clarify does it, and the other offline options worth knowing.
Free beta for Apple silicon Macs, macOS 14 or later. English.
Why dictate offline
- Privacy. What you say about patients, clients, code or your own life never reaches someone else's server.
- It works anywhere. On a plane, on bad hotel Wi-Fi, or on a network that blocks outside services.
- No account, nothing to renew. Software that runs on your Mac has no servers to pay for, so it doesn't need a subscription.
Many popular dictation apps send your audio to the cloud to transcribe it. Wispr Flow, for example, says "Transcription always occurs on the cloud." That is a reasonable design, but it is not offline.
How Clarify does it
Hold Right ⌘ and Right ⌥, speak, and let go. Clean, punctuated text is pasted once at your cursor, in whatever app you are using.
- Recognition and cleanup run on your Mac. Speech recognition (NVIDIA's Parakeet model) runs on the Apple Neural Engine; a small cleanup model removes the ums, adds punctuation and writes numbers the way you'd type them.
- The models ship inside the app. The download is about 1.3 GB because everything is already in it. Nothing is fetched the first time you speak.
- It never drops your words. If cleanup would leave out something you said, that sentence is pasted as you said it.
- Your vocabulary. Teach it names and terms, and correct the last dictation in one step.
- No account. Nothing to sign up for.
What does leave your Mac: nothing you say. Clarify makes one kind of request on its own, a check for updates, and only when you start one or switch automatic checks on. If you connect a rewriting model of your own, the text you ask it to rewrite goes there.
Coming in v1 Published proof: a no-network check during dictation and meetings.
The same key also controls your Mac: switch apps, run Shortcuts, send a question to Claude or ChatGPT. See voice control on Mac.
Other offline options worth knowing
Clarify isn't the only way to dictate offline. These descriptions come from each product's own pages, checked on 1 October 2026; prices and features change, so check before you choose.
| Runs offline | Cost | Platforms | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clarify | Yes; models inside the app. Optional tone rewrites use a model you connect | Free beta; never a subscription | Mac (Apple silicon) |
| Apple Dictation | On Apple silicon; Keyboard settings show whether it is processed on your Mac | Free, built in | Built into macOS |
| Google AI Edge Eloquent | Its App Store listing says processing "runs entirely locally", though "some advanced optional features require cloud" | Free, no subscription | iPhone and iPad; Google's page also offers a Mac download |
| VoiceInk | Yes, "processes all voice transcription locally" | One-time, from $25 | Mac (macOS 14.4+), iOS |
| Superwhisper | With its local models; cloud models too | Free tier; paid plans | Mac, Windows, iOS, Android |
| Handy | Yes, "works completely offline" | Free, open source | Mac, Windows, Linux |
| Wispr Flow | No: "Transcription always occurs on the cloud" | Free tier; Pro $12–15 a month | Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android |
How to choose
- Occasional dictation, nothing to install: Apple Dictation. It stops after 30 seconds without speech.
- Free and open source, on any desktop: Handy.
- Many languages: Superwhisper, or Wispr Flow if cloud processing is fine for you. Clarify is English only for now.
- Dictation that also acts on your Mac, with nothing you say leaving it: Clarify.