Dictation for confidential work on a Mac

For confidential work such as client files, patient notes, HR cases or contract drafts, use a dictation app that turns speech into text on the Mac itself, then check that claim yourself with Wi-Fi off and a firewall. YappYapp transcribes on your Mac; this guide lists what it keeps, every connection it makes, and how to verify both.

This is not legal or compliance advice, and YappYapp makes no compliance claim. Rules on professional secrecy, health data and personal data depend on your country, your profession and your employer. Check your own obligations with your data protection officer, your IT team or your professional body, and use the facts below as input.

What stays on your Mac with YappYapp

• Your voice. Each recording goes to a temporary audio file on your Mac, is transcribed there by a local model (Parakeet, Whisper or Qwen3-ASR), and the file is deleted after transcription. If a transcription fails, that one recording is kept in a private temporary file so you can retry, and it is deleted once the retry works or when you quit.
• Your transcripts. The history holds your last 10 dictations in memory and clears when the app quits. It is never written to disk.
• Cleanup and translation. The optional cleanup and translation models also run on your Mac. When they stay loaded, they listen only on 127.0.0.1, the Mac's own internal address, which other machines cannot reach.
• Your words. Names and terms you add to WORDS are stored in ~/Library/Application Support/YappYapp/. They reach the local speech and cleanup helpers through internal channels, never on a command line.
• Password fields. YappYapp never types into password fields or other secure input.

There is no account, no API key and no cloud transcription.

Every network call the app makes

The source code is public, so this list comes from the app itself:

1. Update check. Packaged builds check raw.githubusercontent.com/migueltorrezd/yappyapp-releases once a day for a new version. The request carries the app version, nothing about you or your dictations. Turn it off with CHECK FOR UPDATES DAILY in Setup > App.
2. Update download. Only when you accept an update, the new version comes from github.com/migueltorrezd/yappyapp-releases, and its signature is verified before it installs.
3. Model downloads. Speech models (Parakeet, Whisper, Qwen3-ASR), the cleanup model and the translation models come from fixed, pinned versions on huggingface.co, only when you pick one, and each file is checked against a known checksum. ALLOW MODEL DOWNLOADS in Setup > App turns them all off.
4. Help links. The YOUTUBE and LINKEDIN buttons in Setup > Help open your browser only when you click them. The app does not contact those sites itself.

The source repository includes a network policy check that fails when the code adds a web address outside this list. The privacy page and why your dictation app should never see the internet explain the same rules in plain words.

Verify it yourself

Test with Wi-⁠Fi off

1. While online, install YappYapp from the download page and download the speech model you want, following the setup guide. If you use cleanup or translation, download those models too.
2. Turn Wi-Fi off and unplug any Ethernet cable.
3. Open a text editor and dictate a few sentences.

If the text appears, the transcription happened on your Mac. The offline dictation guide covers this setup in more detail.

Watch it with a firewall

An outgoing firewall shows every connection an app tries to open and lets you block it. Two options for macOS: LuLu, which is free and open source and blocks unknown outgoing connections, and Little Snitch, a paid app that also has a free demo mode. Both were checked on their own sites on 25 Oct 2026.

With either one running, dictate as usual for a day. What you should see from YappYapp:

• GitHub, once a day, for the update check (unless you turned it off), and again only when you install an update.
• Hugging Face, only while a model you picked is downloading.
• Its own helper processes (whisper-server or llama-server) connecting to 127.0.0.1. That traffic stays inside your Mac.

You can deny the GitHub and Hugging Face requests and dictation keeps working once your models are installed. If you ever see YappYapp reach anything else, report it privately through the security page of the repository.

Check microphone access

macOS lists every app allowed to use the microphone in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Microphone, and the recording indicator in Control Center shows when the microphone is in use or was used recently. See Apple's guide to microphone access.

On a company Mac

IT can install models ahead of time and set allowModelDownloads to false, so the app never downloads anything, and can lock settings such as Learn from my fixes with a configuration profile. The instructions are in the managed installs guide.

What to check in any dictation tool

Whatever app you use, these questions show where your words go:

• Where does speech become text? On your Mac, or on a company's servers? Is on-device the default, or an option you have to find?
• What does it store, and where? Audio, transcripts, history: on disk, in the cloud, for how long?
• Which connections does it make, and can you turn each one off? Look for a written list, then compare it with what a firewall shows.
• Do "smart" features leave the Mac? Rewriting, summaries and translation can send your text to a server even when transcription is local.
• What happens to the clipboard? YappYapp puts your previous clipboard back after each paste and marks its writes so they stay on this Mac, but clipboard manager apps can still keep a copy of anything copied. Consider turning them off for sensitive work.

FAQ

Is YappYapp GDPR or HIPAA compliant?

YappYapp makes no compliance claims. It gives you the facts above: transcription on your Mac, no account, no transcript history on disk, and a short list of network calls you can turn off. Whether that fits your obligations is for you and your organisation to decide.

What does YappYapp save on disk?

Your settings, your words and snippets, the downloaded models and your pet stats, in ~/Library/Application Support/YappYapp/. A weekly pet recap card is saved to Pictures/YappYapp only when you ask for one. No audio and no transcripts, unless you save a file transcript yourself.