Your voice is processed on your Mac.
Sayburst's speech recognition runs locally. Nothing you say is sent to Sayburst, and nothing has to go anywhere at all.
- Microphoneonly while you hold the key
- Speech modelParakeet or Whisper, on the Neural Engine or GPU
- Cleanupfillers, punctuation, vocabulary, replacements
- Your apptext pasted where your cursor is
When Sayburst uses the internet
| What | When | What's sent |
|---|---|---|
| Model download | Once per model, when you choose it | A normal file request to huggingface.co, where the models are hosted |
| Trial registration | First launch, if online | An anonymous device ID (a one-way hash of your Mac's hardware ID) and the app version |
| License activation | When you enter a key | The key, the device ID, your Mac's name, app and macOS version |
| License check | About once a week, silently | A signed license token, the device ID, app version |
| Update check | Daily, if automatic updates are on | A request for the update feed (app version, macOS version) |
| Sayburst Writer download | Once, if you turn on the built-in AI writer | A normal file request to huggingface.co. After that the writer runs on your Mac; your text never leaves it |
| Cloud writing provider | Only if you choose one instead of Sayburst Writer and use a mode that polishes text | Your cleaned text and any context you enabled — to the provider you chose, not to Sayburst |
Audio is never uploaded by Sayburst. Transcripts are never sent to Sayburst's servers.
Working offline
After a model is downloaded, dictation, cleanup, vocabulary, replacements, history, notes and file transcription all work without a connection. You can confirm this by turning off Wi-Fi and dictating.
- A purchased license keeps working offline for up to 60 days between checks. If you've been offline longer, connect once and Sayburst checks in the background.
- The trial runs for 7 days whether you're online or not.
- Polishing with a cloud provider needs internet; Sayburst Writer, Ollama and LM Studio run on your Mac and work offline.
What's stored on your Mac
- History: a local database of transcripts in
~/Library/Application Support/Sayburst. Keep it forever, for 90/30/7/1 days, or turn it off. - Recordings: written to disk while you speak, so a crash can't lose them, then deleted once the text is saved — unless you choose to keep them.
- API keys and license tokens: in your Mac's keychain.
What Sayburst can see
Sayburst asks for two permissions. Microphone, used only while you hold the dictation key. Accessibility, used to detect the key and to paste into the focused field. It reads selected text, clipboard text or window text only if you turn those on as context for a writing provider. To learn words you correct, it re-reads the text near your cursor in the field you just dictated into a few times over the next minute; this happens only on your Mac, keeps only the words you add (and ones you declined, so it doesn't ask again), and can be turned off in Settings › Dictionary. It never reads password fields.
Diagnostics you export for support exclude recordings, transcripts, your dictionary, API keys and license keys.