Free local dictation for Mac.

Lipik and typical cloud dictation apps

Many dictation apps send your recording to a server, turn it into text there, and charge a monthly fee or limit how many words you can use for free. Lipik does the work on your Mac instead. Details differ from app to app, so check each app's own site.

What runs on your Mac

Speech to text uses Parakeet by default, an English model. Lipik downloads it once from Hugging Face; it is 731 MB. For other languages, you can download one of the free Whisper models in Settings. Together they cover 99 languages, and Hinglish works in beta.

The clean-up step removes filler words, fixes punctuation and writes in the tone you set for each kind of app. It is optional, and it is built in, so no other app is needed. One button in setup downloads the clean-up model from Hugging Face: Qwen3 8B (5 GB) on Macs with 16 GB of memory or more, or Qwen3 4B Instruct (2.5 GB) on smaller Macs. It runs on your Mac. Built-in clean-up needs macOS 13.3 or later. On older versions, you can use the free Ollama app instead. Without a clean-up model, Lipik still types what you said, and its built-in rules still fix "um", spoken punctuation, numbers, times and emails.

If you'd rather use a cloud model for clean-up, you can add your own API key. Only then is text sent to that provider, and only the text, not your recording.

What needs the internet

Lipik goes online only for these:

• one-time downloads from Hugging Face: the speech model (731 MB), the clean-up model (2.5 or 5 GB) and, for meeting notes, the speaker model (33 MB)
• Apple's English (India) speech files, through macOS, for Hinglish only
• once a day, a check with GitHub for the latest version number, to show a "new version" notice. It carries nothing about you, and you can turn it off in Settings, under Privacy, then Updates.
• every few hours, an anonymous count so we know how many people use Lipik: a random ID, the app version and the macOS version. Never your voice, text or name. Turn it off in Settings, under Privacy, then Usage count.
• your email, only if you type it during setup to hear about new versions
• cloud clean-up, only if you add your own API key

After the downloads, dictation works with Wi-Fi off. There is no account, no ads and no tracking. Your voice and your text never leave your Mac.

What else is included

Every feature is free. Besides dictation in any app, you get:

• a Dictionary for names and words it gets wrong, and snippets
• hands-free dictation with fn + Space
• meeting notes with a transcript and a short summary, with no bot joining the call

The full list is on the pricing page.