Dictating on a Mac with no internet

01 · The problem

Most of them need a connection.

They send the audio to a server, transcribe it there and send the text back. They do it because until recently that was the only way to get good accuracy, and because owning a server is what lets you charge a subscription.

• On a plane or a train, you don't write. No signal, no dictation, however much the plan costs.
• Your voice leaves your computer. If you dictate medical notes, case files or anything about a client, that's a decision you're making on your own.
• You wait. The network adds its own time to every dictation, and there's no getting it back.

03 · The detail

What works and what doesn't.

Being honest about this matters more than the promise, because it's what you find out on day two.

The rule-based cleanup — filler words, punctuation, spoken corrections — uses no language model at all: they're deterministic rules that take under 10 ms per dictation. That figure comes from the project's own test bench, which runs on every change across 62 cases.