FAQ

Last updated: 2026-05-25

Is dictate sending my voice anywhere?

No. By default everything runs locally: Whisper handles speech recognition, and Ollama handles cleanup. OpenRouter is opt-in only.

Why macOS only?

The hotkey, accessibility, and synthetic input APIs dictate relies on are macOS-specific. A Linux port is theoretically possible but is not in scope for v0.1.

What's the difference between dictate and macOS built-in Dictation?

Built-in Dictation requires holding fn or saying "Hey Siri", can send audio to Apple servers on older Macs, and does not offer developer-grade controls. dictate is hotkey-driven, runs locally by default, and supports per-app vocab, voice commands, redaction, and history review.

How accurate is it?

Accuracy depends on the Whisper model. tiny.en is fast but error-prone, small.en is the default good tradeoff, and medium.en is more accurate but slower; run dictate doctor to see what's loaded.

How do I use MLX for faster transcription on Apple Silicon?

Install the optional backend with pip install mlx-whisper, then set asr.backend: mlx in config/settings.yaml or your user prefs. The default MLX model is mlx-community/whisper-small.en-mlx; override it with asr.mlx.model if you want another model from mlx-community on Hugging Face.

Can I dictate code?

Yes. The code preset includes developer vocabulary, and you can dictate replacements like "snake case my var"; this is currently LLM-cleaned, with deterministic code grammar planned for v0.3 in the ROADMAP.

Where's my data stored?

Config lives in ~/.config/dictate/, transcripts are stored by default at ~/dictate/history.jsonl (configurable via history.path in config/settings.yaml), and model weights live under ~/.cache/huggingface/. Nothing else is stored by dictate.

How do I delete history?

Remove history.jsonl from the repo directory, or use the WebUI delete button via dictate-web.

Why isn't there an app icon / DMG / Homebrew tap?

By design. dictate is a self-hosted tool, not a marketplace product. You clone the repo, run install.sh, and you own the install. If you want a .app bundle for your own use, the Build .app guide walks through it; signed and notarised distribution is intentionally out of scope.

Can I contribute?

Yes. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the contribution workflow.

How do I report a security issue?

Use GitHub Security Advisories. See SECURITY.md for details.

What if Ollama is down?

dictate falls back to raw, unedited ASR output automatically after 3 consecutive failures.

Does it work with Slack/Notion/VSCode/etc?

Mostly yes. See ROADMAP.md for documented edge cases per app.