The best offline speech-to-text apps for Mac
Speech recognition that runs entirely on your Mac: which apps do it, which models they use, and how fast they are on Apple silicon.
"Offline" means your voice is turned into text by a model running on your Mac — no server involved. On Apple silicon that's now fast enough that you won't notice the difference.
Sayburst
Best for Typing by voice into any app, offline · Price $29 once
Parakeet v3 on the Neural Engine by default — 0.46% word error rate and a median of 82 ms to text in our benchmark — and Whisper Large v3 Turbo for 99 languages. Downloads are verified against published checksums, and cleanup (fillers, punctuation, your vocabulary) also runs locally.
MacWhisper
Best for Offline transcription of recordings · Price Free; Pro €64 once
Local Whisper models with speaker labels, subtitles and batch processing. The best choice for files. Comparison
VoiceInk
Best for Open-source local dictation · Price $25 once
Local Whisper and Parakeet, GPL-3.0. Comparison
Apple Dictation
Best for Free, built in · Price Free
On-device for many languages on Apple silicon; check System Settings › Keyboard › Dictation to see whether yours is downloaded.
Handy
Best for Free and open source · Price Free (MIT)
Local Whisper and Parakeet with a simple hold-to-talk shortcut, without cleanup or modes.
How to check that an app is really offline
Turn off Wi-Fi and dictate. If text still appears, it's being transcribed on your Mac. More on offline dictation.
Hold fn, talk, and clean text lands where your cursor is. Free for 7 days.
Download SayburstQuestions people ask
Which speech model is best for offline use on a Mac?
NVIDIA's Parakeet v3 — Sayburst's default — had the lowest error rate in our benchmark (0.46%) and turns dictation into text in 82 ms. Whisper Large v3 Turbo supports far more languages (99).