Private dictation: speech to text that stays on your own PC

When you dictate, you’re handing an app your voice and whatever you’re saying: client details, a note about a doctor’s visit, a message to family. It’s worth knowing where that goes.

This guide explains the difference between cloud and on-device speech to text, the questions to ask about any dictation app, and what to look for if privacy matters to you.

Cloud vs. on-device

There are two basic ways a dictation app turns speech into text.

• Cloud: your audio is sent over the internet to a server, which turns it into text and sends the text back. This is how many apps work, because big servers can run big models.
• On-device (local): the speech model runs on your own computer. Your audio never leaves the machine. Text appears without a round trip to a server.

On-device used to mean worse accuracy. That’s changed. Modern speech models run well on ordinary computers, and much faster on a computer with a graphics card (GPU).

Why on-device matters

• Your voice stays yours. Audio is the most personal part. If it never leaves your computer, it can’t be stored, leaked or used to train someone else’s model.
• It works without internet. No connection, no problem.
• There’s less to trust. You don’t have to read a long privacy policy about what happens to your recordings on a server.

Questions to ask any dictation app

Before you trust an app with your voice, look for clear answers to these:

1. Where is speech turned into text? On your computer, or on a server?
2. Is audio ever uploaded? Even “temporarily” or “to improve the service”?
3. What’s saved, and where? Is there a history of what you said? Is it on your computer or in an account?
4. Is the saved history encrypted?
5. Can you choose how long things are kept?
6. What do the optional features send? AI cleanup and summaries often use a cloud service. Do they send audio or only text?
7. Is anything sent for analytics? Word counts, app usage, error reports?

If an app can’t answer these plainly, that’s an answer too.

What “private by default” should look like

A dictation app that takes privacy seriously should:

• Do speech to text on your machine.
• Keep its history on your machine, encrypted.
• Make cloud features optional and off until you choose them.
• Tell you exactly what an optional feature sends.
• Keep work files out of synced cloud folders unless you say otherwise.

Trade-offs to know about

Local isn’t free of costs.

• It uses your computer. The speech model takes memory and processing. A GPU helps a lot.
• First setup is bigger. The model has to download once.
• Older or slower machines may feel slower than a cloud service.

For most people with a reasonably recent computer, these are small. For anyone who handles sensitive information, they’re well worth it.

A quick test you can run

You don’t have to take an app’s word for it. A simple check:

1. Turn off your internet (unplug, or switch off Wi-Fi).
2. Dictate a sentence into any text box.
3. See what happens. If the text still appears, speech to text is happening on your computer. If it fails or waits, it needs a server.

This doesn’t tell you everything, like what an app sends once you’re back online, but it’s a fast way to see where the main work happens. Read the app’s settings too, and turn off anything that sends data you don’t want sent.

How Updraft helps

Updraft, our free dictation app for Windows and Mac, was built private by default.

• Audio stays local. Speech is turned into text on your PC, on your GPU if you have one. Audio is never uploaded.
• AI is optional. The AI features use your own Claude key and only ever send text, never your voice.
• Encrypted on your PC. Your dictation history, notes and clipboard are encrypted and stored only on your PC. You pick how long they’re kept.
• Out of OneDrive. Meeting files stay out of OneDrive by default, and it warns you before saving into a synced folder.
• Insights stay home. Words per minute, total words and the rest are counted on your PC and never sent anywhere.
• Connectors are off until you turn them on. You can let Claude Code, Claude Desktop or Gemini CLI search your meetings, read-only, but only if you choose to.
• Phone to PC without the cloud. Send text between your phone and PC by scanning a QR code, over your own Wi-Fi. No cloud, no app.

Updraft runs on Windows, and on Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 13.3 or newer. Windows installs without admin. For the basics of dictating well, see voice typing on Windows and Mac.