Offline dictation
Offline speech to text that never asks for wifi.
Most dictation apps are a microphone attached to someone else's server. Blurt loads the model onto your Mac, so the only thing between you and the text is your own hardware.
There are two reasons people search for this. Either the connection is unreliable, on a flight, on a train, in a basement office, or the connection is not allowed, because the words are confidential. Both end at the same requirement: the speech model has to live on the machine.
What offline actually requires.
The model has to be local, not cached
Blurt downloads Whisper large-v3-turbo once, roughly 874 MB, and runs it on the Metal GPU. Parakeet is an alternative at 670 MB that runs on the CPU and is faster for English. After the download there is no transcription traffic at all.
No account means no login screen at 38,000 feet
An app that authenticates on launch is not offline, whatever the marketing says. Blurt has no account. It checks a licence key about once a week when a connection happens to exist, and keeps working when it does not.
Formatting has to be local too
Cleanup is where most private apps quietly reach for the cloud. Blurt runs an optional local model for punctuation, paragraphs and lists, and rule-based filler removal that needs no model at all. There is no API key to add.
So does everything downstream
History is stored on your disk and can be searched, edited and exported. Meeting mode records your mic and the call's system audio, transcribes both locally and exports Markdown, with no bot joining and no upload.
Side by side
Competitor details and prices checked Sept 2026| Feature | Blurt, offline | Cloud dictation |
|---|---|---|
| On a flight with wifi off | Works exactly as it does at your desk | Does not work |
| Where the audio is processed | Your Mac | A server you do not control |
| Account and login | None | Required |
| Latency depends on | Your Mac, typically under a second | Your connection and their queue |
| Setup cost | One model download, 0.6 to 1.6 GB | Sign up |
| Data retention question | Does not arise | Depends on their policy |
| Price (Sept 2026) | $3.99/mo, $29/yr, or $99 once | Commonly $10 to $15 a month |
On a flight with wifi off
Where the audio is processed
Account and login
Latency depends on
Setup cost
Data retention question
Price (Sept 2026)
FAQ
Does Blurt need internet at all?
Only for four things, none of them transcription: downloading a speech model, fetching a signed update manifest, a roughly weekly licence key check, and sending feedback if you choose to. Dictation itself never opens a connection.
Is macOS dictation offline?
Sometimes. Apple runs it on-device for supported languages on recent Macs and falls back to its servers otherwise, which the interface does not make obvious. If offline is a hard requirement, that ambiguity is the problem.
How fast is local transcription?
On an Apple Silicon Mac, text lands in well under a second after you release the key for a normal sentence. Turning on the AI formatting pass adds roughly half a second. The first dictation after a long idle period adds about a second while the model reloads.
How much disk and memory does it use?
The app is about 50 MB. A speech model is 0.6 to 1.6 GB depending on which you pick, and the optional formatting model is another 1.3 GB. Expect one and a half to two gigabytes of memory while a model is loaded; both unload after you stop using them.
Can I use it on a machine with no network at all?
Yes, once the model is on disk and the licence has been validated. The app is built to keep working when the check cannot run rather than locking you out.
Keep reading
Test it with the wifi switched off.
Download the model once, turn off your connection and dictate for two weeks. No card, no account.