LocalWispr
Like Wispr Flow — but local.
Your
voice
data
machine
Never
stored in the cloud
subscription costs
privacy concerns
Apple Silicon · macOS 14+ · notarized by Apple · no card, no signup
Watch
How it works
Everything below happens on your Mac's own silicon — the same words, the same apps, none of the uploading.
Mail, Slack, iMessage, Notion, your editor, your terminal. Hold Fn, speak, release — the text lands at your cursor, punctuated and capitalized.
“Meet at six — actually, five” becomes “Meet at five.” Spoken lists become bullet points. Filler words vanish. Runs on Apple Intelligence, on-device, with a safety check that rejects any edit that changes your meaning. It can even read the field you're dictating into — so “send it to win” comes out “send it to Nguyen” when her email is on your screen. Computed on your Mac, sent nowhere, off in one click.
A waveform meter and rolling transcript show exactly what's being heard while you speak — and every edit the AI makes is shown crossed out, so nothing happens behind your back.
Recording locks on so you can dictate a whole email leaning back in your chair. Tap once to finish, Esc to cancel.
A personal dictionary handles jargon and pronunciations (“k eight s” → k8s, “en gajh” → engage). Snippets expand “my work address” into the whole thing. Nothing is learned by watching you.
English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Ukrainian and more — detected automatically as you speak.
Privacy
Cloud dictation tools stream your voice — often with the text on your screen — to their servers, then hand transcripts to third-party AI providers. LocalWispr was built so that's impossible. There is no server.
Same job. Different philosophy.
| LocalWispr | Wispr Flow | Superwhisper | macOS Dictation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $19 once | $15/mo | $8.49/mo · $250 once | Free |
| Runs on | Your Neural Engine | Cloud servers | Your Mac (local) | Your Mac |
| Audio leaves your Mac | Never | Yes | No (local models) | No (Apple Silicon) |
| Screen text sent as context | Never | Yes | No | No |
| Works offline | Always | No | Yes | Yes |
| Account required | None | Yes | For sync | None |
| AI cleanup & self-corrections | Yes, on-device | Yes, cloud | Yes | No |
| Speed | ~190× realtime | Cloud-dependent | Model-dependent | Realtime only |
| Telemetry | Zero | Extensive | Minimal | Apple's |
| Free trial | 2,000 words | 2,000 words/week | Free tier | Always free |
Competitor pricing is public, as of July 2026. We're not affiliates and we get nothing if you switch — but if you're paying monthly for something that can't run on a plane, that's worth knowing. macOS Dictation is honest, capable, and free; it just doesn't clean up what you said. And yes — LocalWispr's polish can use on-screen context too: computed on your Mac, sent nowhere, off in one click.
Pricing
One payment. No subscription. It's your computer.
LOCALWISPR — LIFETIME LICENSE
$19.00
Not a launch discount. It's the price.
Unlimited wordsforever
Your Macsall of them
Updatesincluded
Activationoffline
Monthly fee—
TOTAL, EVER$19.00
PAID ONCE · YOURS FOREVER
Buy a LicenseFirst 2,000 words are free — no card, no account.
Your license key appears instantly after checkout.
Prefer to email? Billy will send your key personally.
Questions
After a one-time speech-model download (~1 GB at setup), yes — every transcription and every AI edit runs on your Mac. Turn on Airplane Mode: nothing changes. The only other network request is checking for updates, when you ask.
Your first 2,000 words are free with every feature enabled — no card, no account, no timer. At the limit, dictation pauses until you activate a license. The $19 key unlocks unlimited words for life and even activates offline.
Any Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer) on macOS 14 or later. The optional AI polish uses Apple Intelligence, which needs macOS 26.
It uses NVIDIA's Parakeet speech model, which beats Whisper large-v3 on public English benchmarks, with punctuation built in. Your personal dictionary covers the names and jargon that trip up every engine.
Input Monitoring lets it notice the hotkey in any app — a listen-only tap that cannot log or alter typing. Accessibility lets it type the transcript at your cursor. Settings shows a live diagnostic of both, and the app explains each one before macOS asks.
Audio is transcribed in memory and discarded. Transcripts are kept in a local history file only if you leave that setting on — read it, export it, delete it. There is nowhere else for them to be.
The trial means you'll know before you pay. Buy and regret it anyway? Email within 30 days for your money back.
