Offline Dictation for Mac

Keep your dictation on your Mac

When you speak a draft, a note, or a half-formed thought, it can contain details you would rather keep local. Reed processes your speech on your Mac and blocks network requests from its dictation pipeline. Your audio and transcript are not uploaded for recognition or cleanup.

Local processing also means you can keep writing when Wi-Fi drops out. Once setup is complete, Reed does not need a transcription server to turn your next sentence into text.

Set up once while connected

1. Install Reed. Open the disk image, drag Reed into Applications, and open it. Reed lives in your menu bar.
2. Grant Microphone and Accessibility access. Setup asks for these first: they let Reed hear you and insert text into other apps.
3. Pick your shortcut. Keep the default Control + Option hold, or record your own.
4. Download and prepare the speech model. Setup then downloads about 461 MB and prepares it. Wait until the model is ready before disconnecting; setup continues only when it has loaded.
5. Try a sentence. Hold Control + Option, speak, and release in the practice field. Then try it in an app you use.

Keep the installed model on your Mac for offline use. See setup and permissions if you need help getting ready.

Write where your cursor already is

Click a text field, hold your shortcut, speak, and release. Reed inserts the result into apps such as Mail, Notes, Messages, Slack, browsers, and editors. You can change the shortcut in Settings.

Use it to draft an email, capture notes, or get a first version of a document down. If an app does not accept direct insertion, Reed uses paste; the menu bar also keeps your last dictation available to copy.

Reed working offline does not make another app work offline. Choose a local document or a text field that remains available without a connection. Sending an email, syncing a note, or using a web app may still require internet access.

Clean text, processed on-device

Reed’s rules-based cleanup removes fillers such as “um,” handles restarted phrases, adds punctuation and capitals, and formats spoken numbers. It runs on every supported Mac. Turn cleanup off to keep the speech recognizer’s original transcript.

On macOS 26 with Apple Intelligence available, an additional on-device cleanup tier can help with harder sentences. It is optional; basic dictation and rules-based cleanup do not require it. Review your text before sending or sharing it. Read about cleanup.

Local and cloud dictation: where the work happens

A cloud transcription service sends audio to a remote server for recognition, so that processing depends on a network connection. Reed runs recognition locally using its downloaded model.

Check cleanup as well as recognition when choosing a dictation app: they can use different processing paths. Reed runs both on your Mac. Local processing suits disconnected work and keeping dictation content off a transcription service; it also means Reed needs a supported Apple Silicon Mac and space for the model.

What still uses a connection?

The initial model download (and a repair download if the model files go missing), and app updates are separate from dictation processing. Report an issue opens a GitHub form in your browser; the app itself sends nothing.

Reed has no analytics and no crash reports. The What We Collect page explains its connections and what they carry; the full notice is on our Privacy page.