Offline dictation for Mac
Pines Voice turns speech into text on your Mac itself. The speech model runs on the Mac’s own chip, so dictation works on a plane, on a train or with the Wi-Fi off, and what you say never leaves the machine. Hold the right Option key, speak, let go, and the words land wherever your cursor is.
How it works with no network
- The engines
- Parakeet by default, or whisper.cpp on the Mac’s GPU through Metal. Both run entirely on the machine.
- The models
- Parakeet and three Whisper builds, downloaded once inside the app. After that they need nothing from the internet.
- Where it types
- Any app with a text cursor: Mail, Slack, Notes, VS Code, Terminal. The words go in at the caret.
- The formatter
- An optional model that also runs on your Mac and removes fillers and false starts from English dictation.
- The log
- Transcripts, word counts and the app each one landed in, kept on your Mac.
- The cloud, if you want it
- Add your own OpenAI, Groq or OpenRouter key and switch engines. Switch back and the network is out of the picture again.
Other ways to dictate offline on a Mac
macOS has its own dictation, and on many Macs it runs on the device. System Settings, under Keyboard, shows whether yours does. Superwhisper and MacWhisper run local models too. Wispr Flow transcribes in the cloud. The comparisons are here: Apple Dictation, Superwhisper, MacWhisper and Wispr Flow.
Questions people ask
Does Pines Voice work with no internet?
Yes. Signing in needs the internet. Once you are signed in and a model is downloaded inside the app, dictation needs no network.
Where does my audio go?
With the local engine, nowhere. The audio is turned into text on your Mac and the transcript stays in the log on your Mac. Pines Rocks runs no server that receives audio or transcripts.
Which speech models run offline?
Parakeet, the default on a fresh install, and three Whisper models that run through whisper.cpp on the Mac’s GPU with Metal. You pick one in Settings.
Which Macs does it run on?
Macs with Apple silicon, on macOS 12 or newer.
How much does it cost?
Nothing. Pines Voice is free, the whole app, and the local engine costs nothing per dictation. You sign in with Google or email to use it.