Dictator is a dictation keyboard and meeting-notes app for iPhone and Mac. This policy explains what it does and does not do with your data. The short version: what you say is never stored by us or used to train AI; the free tier transcribes on your device; and the only thing the apps send about how they're running is an anonymous problem report you can turn off.
Your voice (audio).
Transcribed text. The resulting text is inserted where your cursor is. Your most recent transcript is cached locally on your device for convenience and is not transmitted to us.
Personal vocabulary. Words and names you add are stored locally on your device so your transcripts are spelled your way. They are not transmitted to us.
Meetings. When you record a meeting or import a recording, the audio, transcript and notes are saved on your device (on iPhone, in Files › On My iPhone › Dictator; on Mac, in Dictator's folder in your Library). On Mac, a meeting recording includes your microphone and the sound your Mac plays (for example the other side of a call), only while you are recording. With Dictator Pro, the audio is sent to our transcription provider (Groq) to be transcribed, and the transcript (with any notes you typed) is sent to Groq to write the meeting notes and to answer questions you ask about it. As with dictation, this is used only to produce your result and is not stored by us afterward. You can choose to transcribe on your device instead. To label who spoke, Dictator tells the voices in a recording apart on your device; nothing about the voices is kept apart from the labels themselves ("Speaker 1"). Meetings you delete are removed from your device. It is your responsibility to tell the people you record, and to get their consent where the law requires it.
Voice recognition (optional, off until you allow it). If you choose "Recognize my voice", Dictator learns what your voice sounds like from a few of your dictations so it can label you "Me" in meeting transcripts. This creates a voice signature: a list of numbers that describes your voice, not a recording, and it may count as biometric information under laws such as the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. It is created and kept only on your device. It is never sent to us or to anyone else, never sold or shared, and used for nothing but this label. It is deleted as soon as you turn the setting off (on iPhone in Meetings › ••• ; on Mac in Settings › General › Meetings), when you delete the iPhone app, and in any case after one year in which it was not updated. Dictator does not identify anyone else by voice: other speakers are only told apart within a single recording.
Activity log. A detailed activity log is kept locally on your device to help troubleshoot. It is not transmitted anywhere unless you choose to share it with us.
Dictator for Mac. Speech is transcribed on your Mac by an on-device model. The resulting text is then sent, over an encrypted connection, through our server to Groq for the clean-up step (punctuation, formatting, your chosen style), and is not stored by us afterward. If you add your own Groq API key, the text goes straight to Groq under your account instead. Meetings on Mac are transcribed on your Mac unless you turn on cloud transcription.
Polish key (Pro). When you tap Polish on the keyboard, the text you selected (or, with nothing selected, the whole text box, up to a few thousand characters) is sent to Groq through our server to be rewritten, and is not stored by us afterward. Nothing is sent unless you tap it.
Payments (Pro). Subscriptions are processed by Apple through in-app purchase. We never receive or store your payment details, and there is no account or sign-in.
We do not collect your name, contacts, location, photos, browsing history, or advertising identifiers, and we do not sell your data or use it for advertising.
Dictator's keyboard needs "Full Access" to hand your recording to the Dictator app and get the text back (through storage the two share on your iPhone). The keyboard itself never connects to the internet. A keyboard with Full Access is technically able to read the text field you're typing in; Dictator uses this only to insert and edit your dictated text, and for Polish when you tap it. It does not log, store, or transmit your keystrokes or the contents of your text fields.
Website. On trydictator.com we use PostHog to understand, in aggregate, how people find and move through the site — for example how many visitors download the Mac app or join the iPhone waitlist. It runs without advertising cookies, we do not use it to track you across other websites, and we do not sell this data. We only record a handful of anonymous events (page views, a download click, a waitlist signup), never the contents of anything you type.
In the apps: anonymous diagnostics. So we can find and fix problems quickly, the Dictator apps send short, anonymous reports about how the app is working. They are on by default and you can turn them off at any time: on iPhone in Dictator › Settings › "Share anonymous diagnostics"; on Mac in Settings › General. A report contains only:
A report never contains what you say, dictate, type or record, your transcripts, meeting notes, vocabulary, contacts or location. The apps contain no third-party analytics or advertising SDKs: reports go to our own server, which passes only the allowed fields on to PostHog, our analytics provider. We do not use them to track you across apps or websites, and we do not sell them.
Cloud audio and text are processed transiently and not retained by us after your result is returned, nor by Groq, whose Zero Data Retention setting is on for our account. Anonymous diagnostics are kept by PostHog for up to 12 months. Local data (last transcript, meetings, vocabulary, logs, settings) stays on your device until you delete it or uninstall the app.
Network requests use encrypted connections (HTTPS/TLS). With Pro, our transcription API key is held only on our servers, never in the app.
Because the free tier keeps your data on your device and we collect very little otherwise, there is little for us to hold. To ask about, access, or delete any data associated with a Pro subscription, contact us at [email protected]. Depending on where you live (e.g. EEA/UK under GDPR, California under CCPA), you may have rights to access or delete your data; we will honor applicable requests.
Dictator is not directed to children under 13 and does not knowingly collect data from them.
We may update this policy; we will post the new version with a new effective date.
Jeremy Irons — [email protected]