Offline vs Cloud Dictation on macOS - A Practical Guide - Voice Type blog Skip to main content Voice Type Pricing Learn Enterprise Trust Blog Blog Offline vs Cloud Dictation on macOS - A Practical Guide What actually makes dictation feel fast and accurate? Real-world trade‑offs between file uploads and on‑device streaming, plus an interactive demo. ← Back to Blog | Home 30 Sept 2025 You speak faster than you type. The question is whether your tools can keep up. This is a practical way to think about speed, accuracy, and privacy on macOS. TL;DR Short phrases (5–15s): handshakes and round‑trips dominate cloud flows. On‑device avoids them. Long sessions (minutes): uploads and proxy hops add up. On‑device streams live and only finalizes the last ~30s when you stop. Accuracy: cleaner input beats heavy “prompt fixes.” Privacy: App Store sandboxed; your audio stays on your Mac. Explore it yourself with the interactive: → Try the demo: /blog/latency-demo What makes cloud feel slow (sometimes) Cloud tools can be excellent. But for dictation, they pay a network tax: TLS/DNS handshakes, upload time (bigger if you avoid lossy compression), and often a proxy hop for a rewrite step. On hotel or café Wi‑Fi, this becomes noticeable, especially for very short or very long recordings. Why on‑device feels steady Voice Type streams locally and transcribes in ~30‑second windows. When you stop, we finish only the last window - typically ≈2–3 seconds on an M1 Mac. There’s no large file upload. If you enable bring‑your‑own‑key rewrites, we talk directly to your provider in a single hop. Accuracy you can feel (without heavy prompting) We normalize loudness, gently remove rumble, and detect speech vs background so the recognizer hears what you meant - not the room. This keeps transcripts faithful without forcing words via prompts. Privacy and reviews you can verify Distributed through the Mac App Store; Apple sandboxing applies. Reviews are genuine App Store reviews - critical ones included. Where cloud still shines Team workflows that need server‑side storage, specialized hosted models, or shared corpora can be a better fit in the cloud. Keep exploring Short utterances: when handshakes dominate → /blog/short-utterances-handshakes Long sessions: uploads vs windowing → /blog/long-sessions-windowing Accuracy basics in plain English → /blog/audio-conditioning-accuracy Trust signals → /blog/reviews-and-privacy Previous Long sessions: uploads vs 30‑second windowing Next Why offline macOS dictation stays fast (even on café Wi‑Fi) Related articles Product Punctuation that sticks: what we fixed and how to get best results A straight look at punctuation and spacing. What we shipped to make it better, how to test it, and a few habits that help on macOS. Engineering Cleaner input, cleaner transcripts: audio conditioning for accuracy Normalized loudness and gentle filtering help the recognizer hear what you meant, not the room. Voice Type Learn All guides Voice Type vs Apple Dictation Dragon alternatives For writers For developers Notion on Mac Latency demo Press kit Company Enterprise Trust Center Pricing Blog Company Terms of service Privacy policy Contact us © 2025 Careless Whisper Inc.