Your Voice Stays on Your Device
Harker transcribes locally with Whisper, so your audio never leaves your Mac. That's the architecture, not a setting.
Download FreeMost dictation tools stream your raw audio to their servers, and you have to trust what happens to it there. If you talk through legal matters, client work, medical notes, or unreleased ideas, that trade-off is hard to accept. And cloud tools simply stop working when you're offline.
How Harker helps
Harker is local-first by design. Transcription runs on your Mac using local Whisper models (whisper.cpp), so your audio is processed on-device and never uploaded, period. The free tier requires no account and works fully offline: there's no server involved because there's nothing to send.
If you choose Premium for AI features, the boundary stays clear: only the transcribed text is sent to the cloud for transformation. It's never stored and never used for training. Compare that with Wispr Flow, which streams your raw audio to the cloud as part of its normal operation. With Harker, the most sensitive thing you produce, your voice, stays home.
This isn't a privacy mode bolted onto a cloud product. It's how Harker works, for everyone, on the free tier and on Premium.
On-device dictation
On-device dictation means your speech is transcribed locally on your own computer, so the audio never leaves your device. Harker does this with local Whisper models (whisper.cpp) running on your Mac, which is why its free tier works fully offline and needs no account.
What is on-device dictation?
On-device dictation transcribes your speech locally on your Mac instead of streaming the audio to a server. With Harker, local Whisper models do the transcription on your device, so your voice never leaves your computer.
Why does on-device transcription matter for privacy?
Because your raw audio is never uploaded, there is nothing for a server to store, leak, or train on. For legal, medical, client, or unreleased work, the most sensitive thing you produce — your voice — stays on your Mac.
Is on-device dictation free, and does it work offline?
Yes. Harker's local transcription is free and unlimited, and because it runs entirely on your Mac it works with no internet connection and no account.
How it works
- 1
Set your shortcut
Pick a global keyboard shortcut. No account, no sign-up, no audio upload.
- 2
Speak
Whisper transcribes your audio on your Mac. Offline works fine; there's no server in the loop.
- 3
Text appears
The transcription is pasted at your cursor. Your audio never left your device.
My favourite part about Harker compared to all the other voice-to-text tools is that it's built for privacy... everything stays locally, and my thoughts and brilliant ideas are not floating around in the cloud somewhere.
Tara Thompson
Questions
Start speaking instead of typing
Free, unlimited, and private. No account required.