Most software asks you to trust their legal privacy policy while routing your voice through cloud servers. MacVoice eliminates the cloud server entirely.
MacVoice is a native macOS utility engineered with a strict local-first, air-gap architecture. When you dictate using MacVoice:
MacVoice captures microphone input via macOS's AVAudioEngine. Audio frames are streamed directly as raw PCM buffers into the active SpeechAnalyzer session.
The moment transcription completes or the session is cancelled, the in-memory buffer is deallocated and cleared. At no point in the process is an audio file (e.g., .wav, .m4a, .pcm) saved to your filesystem, cache folder, or /tmp directory.
The MacVoice binary is compiled in pure Swift and links only against Apple native frameworks (AppKit, Speech, CoreGraphics, Carbon). It contains zero networking libraries, analytics trackers, or cloud speech APIs.
You can independently verify this at any time by monitoring MacVoice's network activity using macOS Activity Monitor, Little Snitch, or Wireshark. During voice typing, outbound traffic is 0 bytes.
MacVoice functions as a voice keyboard, not a note-taking application or meeting recorder. Once text is delivered to your active cursor via synthetic keyboard events, MacVoice maintains no local log or database of what you said.
There is no "history" tab, no search archive, and no indexing of past dictations. What you say belongs solely in the destination document you chose to type into.
MacVoice requests exactly two system permissions, explicitly mandated by macOS security architecture:
NSMicrophoneUsageDescription)Allows MacVoice to stream live audio to Apple's local SpeechAnalyzer framework. macOS displays the standard orange microphone indicator in the menu bar whenever input is active.
Required by macOS for CGEvent.post() so MacVoice can synthesize authentic hardware keystrokes into whichever app holds current focus (e.g. VS Code, Slack, Safari, or remote terminals). Unlike conventional speech tools that monitor or overwrite your clipboard (NSPasteboard), MacVoice never touches your clipboard and never inspects, captures, or logs your existing typing activity.
Inspect linked dynamic libraries on the official binary to confirm zero network dependencies: