Offline dictation for your Mac

Roundhand runs its speech recognition on your Mac, so there is nothing to wait for from the network. Once the speech model has downloaded, which happens once when you set Roundhand up, you can dictate on a plane, on a train, or on a network that blocks outside services. Your audio is never uploaded or saved to disk, whether you are online or not.

Offline, you keep everything you need to write: dictation, the per-app writing styles, your Dictionary and the offline cleanup. A connection is needed for the first download of the speech model, for signing in, for checkout, for app updates, and for cloud cleanup. If you use cloud cleanup and lose your connection partway through the day, Roundhand does not stop: it falls back to the offline cleanup and keeps writing. When you are back online, cloud cleanup resumes on the next dictation without anything to switch.

The offline cleanup is a set of rules that runs on your Mac after each dictation. It removes filler words such as um and uh, keeps the version you meant when you restart a sentence, and fixes capitals and punctuation for the app you are in. It never adds words you did not say. In a terminal it leaves your casing alone, because commands care about it. The offline cleanup is free on every plan, including after the trial ends.

If you want every dictation cleaned up on the Mac, even when you have a paid plan, turn on Local-only mode in Settings. Cleanup then uses only the built-in rules, and no transcript text is sent to a cleanup provider. You can switch it off again at any time, and it is switched on for you when there is no cloud cleanup to use.

Roundhand recognises 25 languages on the Mac, English and most European languages among them. It detects the spoken language by default. If you switch between a few, you can pick up to three in Settings to narrow detection to those. All of it runs offline in the same way.

Does Roundhand need the internet to transcribe?

No, Roundhand transcribes on your Mac without the internet once the speech model has downloaded. The first download is the only step of dictation itself that needs a connection.

Is the offline cleanup good enough on its own?

For most everyday writing, the offline cleanup removes filler words, handles restarts and fixes punctuation and casing. Cloud cleanup can reword more freely; the offline rules only tidy what you said.

Does Roundhand save my recordings?

No, your audio is never uploaded or saved to disk. Roundhand keeps a history of the text you dictated, on your Mac, which you can clear in Settings.

Does offline dictation work on an Intel Mac?

No, Roundhand needs a Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 14 or later, online or offline.