Talk freely.
What you say stays on your machine. Period.
Most dictation software and speech APIs transmit your audio and personal text to remote third-party cloud data centers. LocVak was engineered from the silicon up on a non-negotiable architectural invariant: not a single byte of your voice, keystrokes, or transcripts ever leaves your physical device.
The Four Architectural Invariants
How LocVak guarantees airtight confidentiality through physical on-device engineering.
Device-Native Inference
All neural speech engine weights reside locally on your computer and execute directly in system memory. Computation runs 100% on-device using your machine's built-in processing power. Zero computation is offloaded to remote servers.
Zero-Retention Processing
Microphone audio is processed entirely in volatile temporary memory. The moment transcription completes and words are typed directly at your cursor, all audio memory is instantly cleared. No audio files (.wav, .mp3) are ever written to your disk or stored in permanent cache.
Zero External Network Sockets
The core dictation pipeline does not open any external network connections. LocVak works identically whether your device is connected to high-speed fiber, in airplane mode at 35,000 feet, or physically air-gapped in a secure facility.
Never Used for Model Training
Cloud voice providers routinely harvest user audio to train their commercial generative AI models. Because LocVak operates exclusively on frozen, on-device neural weights, your voice, proprietary trade secrets, and client conversations are never used to train any AI model.
LocVak vs Cloud Voice Providers
See how on-device architecture compares with traditional cloud-dependent voice services.
| Security & Architecture Metric | LocVak (On-Device) | Otter.ai / Fireflies | OpenAI Whisper API | Apple / Microsoft Cloud Dictate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where Audio Is Processed | ✓ 100% On-Device | ✗ Cloud Data Centers | ✗ Cloud API Servers | ✗ Cloud Server Fleet |
| Works in 100% Airplane Mode | ✓ Yes (Zero Internet) | ✗ No (Fails completely) | ✗ No (Fails completely) | ✗ Limited / Degraded |
| Audio Stored on Remote Servers | ✓ 0 Bytes Ever | ✗ Yes (Stored in Cloud) | ✗ Retained up to 30 Days | ✗ Logged & Sampled |
| Customer Data Used for AI Training | ✓ Never (Frozen Weights) | ✗ Subject to Terms | ✗ Subject to Policy | ✗ Used for Siri/Copilot |
| Safe for Attorney-Client Privilege & NDAs | ✓ 100% Safe (No 3rd Party) | ✗ Third-Party Disclosure | ✗ Third-Party Disclosure | ✗ Cloud Disclosure Risk |
| HIPAA & Clinical Documentation Safety | ✓ Inherent (No PHI Transmission) | ✗ Requires Enterprise BAA | ✗ Requires Custom BAA | ✗ Varies by Agreement |
| Vulnerable to Cloud Breaches & Subpoenas | ✓ Immune (Zero Cloud Footprint) | ✗ Vulnerable to Cloud Leaks | ✗ Vulnerable to API Breaches | ✗ Vulnerable to Cloud Leaks |
The Independent Verification Playbook
We invite security researchers, corporate CISOs, and privacy enthusiasts to audit our binary. Here is how you can verify our claims.
The Physical Air-Gap Test
Turn off your Wi-Fi, unplug your Ethernet cable, and switch on Airplane Mode. Press your shortcut and speak for two minutes. LocVak will transcribe your speech at full speed with identical sub-600ms latency.
networksetup -setairportpower en0 off
Application Firewall Audit
Install an interactive network monitor like Little Snitch, Objective-See LuLu, or GlassWire.
Set filter rules to alert on any outbound network connection from the LocVak process.
You will observe zero network connection attempts during active voice dictation.
lsof -i -P | grep -i "locvak"
Deep Packet Inspection (Wireshark)
Launch Wireshark or run tcpdump to capture raw network packets while dictating.
Inspect the capture log for external DNS resolutions, HTTPS POST payloads, or WebSocket handshakes originating from LocVak.
Zero voice packets are transmitted.
sudo tcpdump -i any 'tcp or udp' -nn
Disk I/O & File System Inspection
Use macOS fs_usage or Windows Process Monitor (Procmon) to monitor file system activity during speech capture.
Verify that LocVak does not create temporary audio files or write microphone streams to your SSD.
sudo fs_usage -w -f filesys LocVak
Built for Confidential Professions
When a single data leak can ruin a trial, compromise patient trust, or violate an NDA.
Legal & Litigation
Preserve strict attorney-client privilege. Dictate sensitive depositions, trial briefs, and client notes without third-party cloud subpoena exposure.
Healthcare & Therapy
Clinical notes and patient sessions remain inherently HIPAA compliant by eliminating the cloud vendor transmission boundary entirely.
Finance & Executive
Dictate confidential earnings projections, M&A strategy memos, and private investment theses without risking leaks or competitor espionage.
Engineering & IP
Document proprietary code architectures, trade secrets, and patents freely without feeding your company’s intellectual property to public AI models.
Frequently Asked Privacy Questions
Does LocVak send any telemetry or crash analytics?
By default, LocVak collects 0 telemetry. If you voluntarily opt-in to anonymous quality telemetry in Settings, it only reports basic performance statistics (such as average inference latency). It never captures, logs, or transmits audio snippets or text transcripts.
Where are my custom words and settings stored?
All user preferences, custom vocabulary acronyms, and keyboard shortcuts are stored locally in a plain JSON file inside your user directory (~/.locvak/config.json). They are never synced to a remote database.
How does LocVak receive software updates?
App updates are delivered via secure HTTPS checking against a cryptographic manifest signed with our Apple Developer ID. The update check only queries the latest version number and transmits no hardware identifiers or personal usage data.
Can LocVak be deployed on air-gapped enterprise machines?
Yes. LocVak is completely self-contained. The application bundle and neural model weights can be packaged via MDM (Jamf, Kandji, Microsoft Intune) onto machines with zero internet access, and it will operate without interruption.