How it works

Hold Fn. Speak. Done.

Dictate freely.Private. Secure. Local.

Hold Fn, speak, and the words land wherever your cursor is. It all happens on your Mac.

Download for Mac

Prefer Terminal? One line, direct install:

curl -fsSL https://localflow.eu.com/install.sh | sh

■ Free speech ■ No account ■ Works offline

Free · v0.8.0 · 4.3 MB · macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon · notarized by Apple

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Privacy

Your voice never leaves your Mac.

Privacy here isn't a policy. It's the architecture. Turn off your Wi-Fi and keep dictating.

See it work →
On-device recognitionParakeet-TDT v3 runs on the Apple Neural Engine. Your audio is transcribed in memory and discarded.
Zero network callsThe dictation path never touches the internet. Turn off Wi-Fi and keep dictating.
No account, no analyticsThe only call the app makes is an optional update check, and it asks you first. Neither the app nor this site tracks you.

Command mode

listening…

Select text, hold Ctrl+Fn, say what you want changed. The rewrite happens on your Mac.

Features

Small app,
complete toolkit.

Fast when you want it Enable the optional warm microphone for instant starts and a short pre-roll. It is off by default, so other audio stays undisturbed between dictations.
25 languages English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish and 20 more European languages, detected automatically.
AI polish, also local An optional on-device language model removes the “um”s, fixes false starts, repairs mis-heard words using what's on your screen, and matches tone per app.
Command mode Select text, hold Ctrl+Fn, say “make this shorter”. It is rewritten in place.
Learns your words Correct a name once and it is spelled right from then on. LocalFlow also matches your names and jargon by sound, so they land right even when misheard.
Voice snippets Say a trigger phrase, insert a whole block of text.
Hands-free mode Double-tap Fn to lock recording for longer dictation.
Heals itself If the app ever freezes, it writes a diagnostic and restarts itself within seconds. Loses the microphone? It quietly retries until the audio comes back.

FAQ

Questions.

Is it really free?

Yes. LocalFlow was built as a personal tool and is shared as-is, free. There is no paid tier, no locked features, and nothing to subscribe to.

How can it work offline?

On first launch, LocalFlow downloads a speech-recognition model (about 500 MB) once. After that everything — listening, transcribing, polishing — happens on your Mac's own chip. Airplane mode works fine.

Which Macs does it run on?

Any Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or newer, 2020+) running macOS 14 or later. Intel Macs are not supported: the speech model runs on the Neural Engine.

Why does it need Microphone and Accessibility permissions?

Microphone to hear you; Accessibility to type the result into other apps. A welcome screen walks you through both on first launch. That's all it asks for, and everything stays on the machine.

Why does the orange microphone indicator stay on?

LocalFlow releases the audio hardware between dictations by default. For faster starts you can enable Microfoon warm houden in the LocalFlow menu; this keeps a 300 ms in-memory pre-roll. Audio heard while you are not dictating is discarded immediately and nothing is saved.

Will macOS trust the download?

Yes. Starting with v0.6.5, every LocalFlow release is signed with an Apple-issued Developer ID and notarized by Apple. macOS can verify both the developer and the app before it opens, so the old Open Anyway workaround is no longer needed.

A browser may still show the standard one-time confirmation for an app downloaded from the internet. Prefer a direct install? Paste this in Terminal:

curl -fsSL https://localflow.eu.com/install.sh | sh

The short install script is plain shell you can read first. It fetches the same Developer ID-signed and Apple-notarized zip as the download button. The full install guide is on GitHub.

How do updates work?

LocalFlow checks this site for new versions using Sparkle, the open-source updater used by most Mac apps outside the App Store. It asks your permission before enabling automatic checks, and the check sends nothing about you: it just fetches a version file.

What about the optional AI polish and correction?

If you want filler-word removal, per-app tone, and correction of mis-heard words from on-screen context, just switch it on in the menu. A guided setup installs the free Ollama app and downloads one small model for you — no terminal needed. It runs entirely on your Mac and stays off until you switch it on. Without it, LocalFlow still transcribes, punctuates and capitalizes perfectly well.

Dictate anywhere.
Nothing leaves your Mac.

Download for Mac
curl -fsSL https://localflow.eu.com/install.sh | sh

Free · v0.8.0 · 4.3 MB · macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon · notarized by Apple