Privacy policy

1. What the app does with your data

Audio and text

Microphone audio (and, if you enable live captions or meeting mode, the audio played by the Mac) is captured in memory, transcribed by a locally running model, then released. The resulting text is inserted into the application of your choice. Nothing is written to disk unless you ask, except for the history described below and the subtitle or summary files you choose to save.

History

The app can keep a history of your dictations, on your Mac only, encrypted with a key stored in the macOS Keychain. You can browse, clear or disable it (Settings, History).

Settings, vocabulary, profiles

Stored locally in ~/Library/Application Support/DictateLocal and the app’s preferences. They are neither synced nor transmitted.

2. The app’s network connections

The app connects only to the following destinations, each for a specific reason. The network log (Settings, About) records every connection made, with its destination, reason and the amount of data sent.

Destination	Reason	Data sent
api.lemonsqueezy.com	License activation, recheck (every two weeks) and deactivation.	Your license key, an anonymous fingerprint of the Mac (a non-reversible hash of the hardware identifier) and the computer’s name, so you can recognise your Macs in your customer area.
dictatelocal.com	Update check (Sparkle), once a day, and download of new versions.	App and macOS version, in Sparkle’s standard request. No personal identifier; Sparkle’s anonymous system profile is disabled.
huggingface.co	Download of recognition and speaker-identification models, once per model.	A standard download request. No audio, no text.
AI provider of your choice (api.groq.com or api.openai.com)	Only if you yourself enable a cloud recognition engine and enter your own API key, after explicit consent.	The audio of the current dictation is sent to that provider, and to it alone. It is never used as an automatic fallback. The provider’s privacy policy applies to that processing.

API keys you enter are kept in the macOS Keychain, on your Mac.

3. What the app does not do

• No usage metrics, no telemetry, no automatic crash reports.
• No user account, no sign-up.
• No cloud sync.
• No advertising, no advertising partners.

4. The dictatelocal.com website

This site consists of static pages. It sets no cookies, embeds no third-party scripts or analytics, and loads no resources from third-party domains. The server and Cloudflare, which delivers the site, keep technical logs (IP address, requested page, timestamp, browser) for security and operational purposes, for a limited time.

5. Purchase and billing

Payment takes place on Lemon Squeezy’s checkout page, as merchant of record. Lemon Squeezy collects the information needed for the order (email address, country, payment method, optionally name and VAT number) and processes it under its own privacy policy. The publisher has access to your email address, country and order details, used for support, license management and accounting obligations. The publisher never sees your card number.

6. Support

When you write to [email protected], the messages exchanged are kept for as long as needed to handle your request and meet legal obligations. Please do not send audio recordings containing personal information.

7. Your rights

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and French data-protection law, you have the right to access, rectify, erase, object to, restrict and port the data the publisher holds about you (in practice: purchase email, order details, support exchanges). Write to [email protected]. You may also lodge a complaint with the French authority, the CNIL (cnil.fr), or your local supervisory authority.

Data controller: the publisher identified in the legal notice.

8. Changes

This policy may be updated as the app evolves. The update date appears at the top of the page; substantial changes will be mentioned in the release notes.