Privacy Policy

Local Dictation: Voice to Text turns speech into text on your iPhone, iPad or Mac. This policy covers the app, its keyboard on iPhone and iPad, the Mac app and this website.

Summary

The app collects nothing. Your voice is turned into text on your device by speech models built into the app, and your recordings, text and history stay on your device. We never receive them. The app has no accounts, no servers, no analytics and no ads, and it blocks its own internet access. The only exceptions are Apple services you use or turn on yourself: the App Store for purchases, optional translation downloads and optional iCloud sync of your topic clipboards (all described below). This website asks for your email address only if you request the subscriber gift (see below).

What the app uses, and why

• Microphone: asked the first time you record. The app records only during a dictation, and the system shows its microphone indicator the whole time.
• Speech recognition: open-source speech models and a voice detector are built into the app and run on your device. Nothing is downloaded or sent anywhere to transcribe.
• Translation (Pro, optional, iPhone and iPad): runs on your device, with Apple Translate or one of two open translation models (GaMS for Slovenian and Croatian, TranslateGemma for about 50 languages). Those models are an optional one-time download that your device makes from Apple’s App Store servers when you pick them in Settings › Translate to. The app itself still makes no web requests.
• Apple Intelligence (optional, off by default): if you turn on the clean-up, your finished text is rewritten by Apple’s on-device model, on your device. Your original wording is always kept.
• Notifications: asked once, when your free week starts, so the app can remind you 2 days before it ends. The reminder is scheduled on your device and cancelled if you buy Local Dictation Pro.
• Clipboard: on iPhone and iPad, clipboard history keeps your latest 50 copies, on your device only. With Save copied items automatically (Settings › Privacy, on by default), the last text you copied in any app is added when you open clipboard history in the keyboard; iOS only shares the last copy and may ask you to allow pasting. Passwords and items marked private are skipped. An optional setting, off by default, also adds your latest copy whenever the keyboard or app opens. On a Mac, All items keeps the newest 50 texts you copy anywhere and skips private copies, such as passwords marked by password managers; the Save what I copy switch in the Clipboards window turns it off.
• Input Monitoring and Accessibility (Mac): Input Monitoring lets the app notice the hold key, and that you pressed another key or clicked; Accessibility lets it type your words into other apps. Neither reads, records or saves what you type.
• Country: the country you pick only chooses your dictation language. The country isn’t saved; the language is.
• Siri and Shortcuts (iPhone and iPad): the Start Dictation shortcut only opens the app and starts recording. What you then say is handled by Local Dictation on your device.

The keyboard and Allow Full Access

The Local Dictation keyboard types without Full Access. To capitalise sentences and add a period after a double space, it reads the text just before the cursor, on your device. Its Dictate key needs Full Access. It never saves or sends what you type.

If you turn on Allow Full Access, the keyboard also shares a storage area on your device with the Local Dictation app, to show your words while you speak, insert the result, switch the dictation language and show your transcript and clipboard history. It suggests words from the text just before the cursor, on your device, and reads the clipboard when you open clipboard history or tap Add copied (and whenever the keyboard opens, if you turned that on). iOS warns that a keyboard with Full Access could send what you type over the internet. The Local Dictation keyboard has no internet code and never connects to the internet.

What is kept on your device

• The recording: saved as one audio file while you speak and deleted as soon as it’s transcribed, when no speech is found, or when you cancel. If transcription fails or is stopped, the latest recording stays: on iPhone and iPad so you can retry, until the retry works or you delete it; on a Mac until your next dictation replaces it.
• History: your recent dictations, with date, time and language, plus the original wording when it was cleaned up. History is on by default; you can turn it off.
• Clipboards: clipboard history and the topic clipboards you make.
• Your dictionary (iPhone and iPad): the words you corrected, so the app writes them your way next time. Edit them in Settings › Dictionary.
• Settings: your language and other choices, and whether Local Dictation Pro is active.

If you back up your device (iCloud Backup, a computer backup or Time Machine), the app’s files are part of that backup, kept by Apple in your own iCloud account or on your own computer. We can’t see them.

iCloud sync of your topic clipboards (optional, off by default)

If you turn on iCloud sync of topic clipboards in Settings, the clipboards you made yourself (their names, emoji and the text in them) are kept in your own iCloud account using Apple’s iCloud key-value storage, so they appear on your other iPhone, iPad and Mac signed in to the same Apple Account. Clipboard history (All items on a Mac), your dictations and your audio are never synced. We never receive or see this data; Apple stores it under Apple’s privacy policy. On a Mac, the switch appears in Settings once Pro is active. Turn it off at any time to stop syncing.

What we don’t do

• No accounts, no sign-in.
• No analytics, no ads, no tracking.
• No servers: the app makes no internet requests of its own, and dictation works in airplane mode.
• We never see your recordings, text, history or clipboards.

Purchases

Local Dictation Pro (Monthly with a free first week, or Lifetime) is sold through the App Store. We never see your name, payment details or Apple Account. The app only asks the App Store, on your device, whether you have Pro and when a free week ends. Manage or cancel a subscription in Settings › your name › Subscriptions (on a Mac: App Store › your name › Account Settings).

Other companies

The only other company involved in the app is Apple: the App Store for purchases and the free week, plus the system features the app uses (microphone, translation, Apple Intelligence, notifications, the clipboard, iCloud if you turn on sync, Siri and Shortcuts). Apple’s handling is covered by Apple’s Privacy Policy. If you turned on Share With App Developers in your device’s analytics settings, Apple may give us anonymous crash reports and usage statistics. None of this identifies you.

Subscriber gift and news emails (this website)

On this website you can ask for a subscriber gift: a personal App Store code for Local Dictation, sent by email. It is a welcome gift for joining emails from Sebastian Škoić s.p. about Local Dictation and our other apps, so you only get it if you agree to receive them. When you ask for it, we collect your email address, language, a record of your consent (when you gave it and which wording you agreed to), delivery and unsubscribe status, and the App Store code assigned to you. To prevent abuse and give each address the gift only once, we also keep keyed hashes (scrambled fingerprints) of your email and IP addresses.

We use this to send you the gift email, then occasional news and promo codes for Local Dictation and our other apps. Cloudflare runs this website and the form and stores the record, Brevo sends the emails and keeps the mailing list, and Cloudflare Turnstile checks that the request comes from a person. Apple processes the code when you redeem it.

• Legal basis. Your consent for the emails (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). For the abuse checks (the hashes and the security check), our legitimate interest in handing out the gift fairly (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
• Withdrawing consent. You can withdraw it at any time with the unsubscribe link in every email or by writing to us. This doesn’t affect emails already sent, and a code you already received stays valid.
• How long we keep it. We keep your record while you are subscribed. When you unsubscribe, we remove your address from the mailing list and keep only the record of your request, so your unsubscribe is respected and the address can’t claim the gift again. You can ask us to delete it at any time.

This website

This website has no analytics, no ads and no tracking cookies. It remembers the language you pick, in your own browser only. Cloudflare hosts it and, like any web host, processes technical data such as your IP address to deliver the pages.

Deleting your data and changing your mind

• History: delete single dictations, or clear them all in History. Turning off Save dictation history stops new saves.
• A saved recording: on iPhone and iPad, delete it on the Dictate screen or in Settings; on a Mac, your next dictation replaces it.
• Permissions: turn the microphone, notifications and Full Access on or off any time in your device’s Settings (on a Mac: System Settings › Privacy & Security). Without the microphone the app can’t dictate; without Full Access the keyboard still types.
• Everything: deleting Local Dictation removes everything it kept on your device, including the keyboard’s storage. Synced topic clipboards stay in your iCloud until you delete them while sync is on. Your purchases and free week stay with your Apple Account.

Apart from emails you send us and the gift records described above, we hold no data about you.

Children

The app collects no data from anyone, including children. The subscriber gift on this website is only for people aged 16 or older: if you are under 16, please do not sign up. If we learn that someone under 16 has signed up, we delete their email address.

Your rights

Email support@localdictation.net to access, correct or delete the email records we hold, restrict or object to their use, or receive them in a portable format. You can withdraw your email consent at any time, as described above. You also have the right to complain to a data protection supervisory authority, in particular in the EU or EEA country where you live or work, or in the UK to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Data handled by Apple, such as purchase records and iCloud, is governed by Apple’s policies.

Changes

If this policy changes, we’ll update the effective date above and highlight material changes on this page before they take effect.

Contact

Questions? Email support@localdictation.net. If you email us, we use your address and message only to answer you, and delete them once your question is settled, or sooner if you ask.