I kept seeing people use voice-to-text tools, but I was never interested. Then curiosity got me. I wanted to try how it works.
The most important thing for me, besides it actually working, was privacy. I do not want to send my voice to any cloud service.
I found VoiceInk.
What it is
VoiceInk is a macOS app that transcribes speech to text locally on your device. Your voice data never leaves your Mac. It runs on Apple Silicon (macOS 14+) and uses the Neural Engine for fast local processing. It supports multiple languages.
There is also an optional AI enhancement feature for cleaning up the transcribed text. It supports multiple providers including Groq, Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Ollama. When I want to improve the output while keeping everything private, I use a local Ollama model. That way, even the text enhancement stays on my machine. Only the transcribed text goes through AI, never your voice. And it is entirely optional. You can use VoiceInk fully offline.
Setup and usage
I installed it, did a quick configuration, and it just worked. It starts automatically with the system. In my case, I press the right Command key, speak, and the text appears in about a second. That is it.
Pricing
One-time purchase for $25. No subscription. I am totally fine with that. Pay once and you are done.
How I use it
I do not use it all the time. But when I need to reply to someone, write a quick note, or get my thoughts out of my head, I press the button and speak. It is faster than typing for longer texts, especially when I just want to get ideas down without worrying about structure.
I also use it to write rough drafts. I speak freely, let VoiceInk transcribe it, and then clean it up. This blog post started as a voice recording.
Recommendation
It is fast, private, and it just works. If you are on macOS and want a voice-to-text tool that respects your privacy, check it out.