Altypist turns speech into text entirely on your device — no cloud, no account, nothing uploaded. Dictate anything, anywhere — and for confidential work, it's essential.
No credit card. No account. Full features for 7 days.
One-time purchase · macOS 15+ · Apple Silicon
Don't take a list's word for it. Install Altypist, finish setup, disconnect the network entirely and dictate. It keeps working — and that single test answers all eight points at once.
Most people speak around three times faster than they type. Altypist puts that difference straight into the field you are already working in — nothing to copy or paste.
Cloud dictation uploads your speech to someone else's servers. Altypist doesn't — everything stays on your Mac.
Draft memos and case notes by voice without sending privileged material to a cloud service.
Write session notes right after a session — client confidentiality intact, nothing leaves your Mac.
Dictate patient notes without handing patient data to third-party cloud transcription.
Transcribe interviews and protect your sources — recordings never leave the device.
Fast client and strategy notes that don't end up on someone else's servers.
Talk through drafts and ideas out loud — fast, local, private.
Sometimes the keyboard itself is the problem — because of your hands, your time, your connection, or simply the price of one more subscription.
Carpal tunnel, arthritis, a wrist in a cast. Dictation stops being a convenience and becomes the way you work without paying for it in pain.
Lecture notes, reading summaries and the first draft of an essay — spoken in the time it takes to type the opening paragraph.
Typing slowly, or living with dyslexia, shouldn't decide how much you write. Speak instead, and Altypist handles the punctuation and the spelling.
On a plane, on a train, in a valley with no signal. Cloud dictation stops working exactly where you carry on working.
If you already choose what leaves your device, your voice shouldn't be the exception. Here it doesn't leave — there is nothing to entrust to anyone.
Buy it once and keep it. Less than a single year of cloud dictation, with no charge that comes back every month.
Altypist notices which app you are in and applies the matching profile. It all happens on your Mac, and every profile is editable.
so on the case i need three things request the records prepare the objection and call the client also ask jane to chase the court by friday
Altypist types where your cursor already is, through the macOS accessibility API — so it works in apps we have never tested. There is no integration to install.
Code leaves the text almost exactly as spoken, on purpose: it only fixes obvious typos, so identifiers, commands and variable names arrive intact.
Altypist sends no audio to servers, collects no telemetry and requires no account. The open Whisper model transcribes locally and a built-in model formats the text. Your words physically never leave the device — that's the architecture, not a privacy setting.
Built for HIPAA-sensitive workflows. Altypist doesn't transmit, store, or process any audio or text outside your Mac. Because nothing is ever sent to a server, Altypist removes the cloud-transmission risk that HIPAA compliance programs are built to prevent — there's no Business Associate Agreement to negotiate, because there's no data processor to negotiate one with. (Altypist is a local software tool, not itself a HIPAA-covered entity or service — this describes the architecture, not a compliance certification.)
One shortcut starts dictation over any app. ⌃⇧Space by default, or any key you choose.
Text appears right in the active field — nothing to copy or paste.
Recognition runs on the Apple Neural Engine. No internet, no cloud.
Punctuation, lists and filler-word cleanup — automatically, locally.
English, German, Spanish and more — switch on the fly.
No sign-up. Install, allow the mic, and talk.
| Altypist | Typical cloud dictation | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $49 one-time | $8–30/user/mo |
| Cost over 3 years | $49 | $300–1,080 |
| Payment | One payment, once | Subscription only |
| Where speech is processed | On device | Cloud |
| Works offline | Yes | No |
| Data leaves your device | Never | Yes |
| Account required | No | Yes |
| Recognition engine | Open-source Whisper — publicly auditable | Proprietary cloud |
Cloud figures are the publicly listed per-user rates of comparable dictation services in July 2026, taken from their own pricing pages.
Buying Altypist outright costs less than one year of any cloud subscription — and it stays yours.
One payment, free updates, no expiry and no subscription. The licence is yours, and it moves to another Mac when you do.
Secure card checkout. Launch pricing for a limited time.
Need more than 10 seats, an invoice, or a signed agreement? Volume pricing →
Yes. Audio and text are never uploaded — they stay on your Mac. No account, no telemetry, no cloud transfer. That removes an entire class of leak risk that cloud services carry. For HIPAA-sensitive work this matters twice over: with no server in the path there is no data processor to sign a Business Associate Agreement with, because there is no processor at all.
No. Recognition runs on-device. Internet is needed only once, to download the model on first launch.
Nowhere. Neither the audio nor the transcript leaves your Mac.
No. You pay once ($49–$299 by tier) and the licence is yours: updates included, no expiry, no monthly charge. We did offer a monthly plan and withdrew it — for software that runs entirely on your own Mac, a recurring fee is not something we can justify.
Depends on the tier: 1, 3 or 10 devices. The licence is transferable — free one Mac, activate another.
No. Altypist runs on Apple Silicon (M1 or later) and macOS 15 or later, because recognition runs on the Apple Neural Engine.
Your license is tied to you, not the device. Deactivate on the old Mac, activate on the new one — takes a minute.
Drag Altypist to Applications, allow the microphone and accessibility, pick a model, and you're done — about three minutes, and the only slow part is the one-time model download. The install guide has a screenshot of every screen you will see.
Yes, to anything you can press. The default is ⌃⇧Space — tap once to start, tap again to stop, no holding. There are presets for the 🌐 Globe key, ⌥Space and Fn+F5, and you can record any combination of your own. The full detail is here.
Start with the free 7 days — no card needed. If you have already bought, you have 30 days to ask for a full refund, with no reason required. Refund policy.
Yes — see the Security & Architecture page for a full technical breakdown. Altypist is built on the open-source Whisper model, so the recognition engine itself is publicly auditable.