Turn documents, images and recordings into AI-ready text, right on your Mac

The entitlement list in the finished program has exactly three items: run in the sandbox, read and write files you yourself select through the standard open panel, and remember those folders for next time. A network entitlement does not exist in the program, and a missing entitlement cannot be switched on: it has to be added, and the program built and released again. The app gives you the command that reads the entitlements straight out of the installed program, under Settings and Privacy, so you see what macOS actually enforces.

One qualification belongs here: the file entitlement covers both reading and writing in the same item. That the app only reads the source folder and never writes to it is the app’s own behaviour, not something the operating system enforces. Confirming it takes a review of the code.

The app does not record how it is used and sends neither usage statistics nor error reports. This is not a setting left off: those functions are not in the program. It builds on code that ships with macOS, plus one pinned, statically linked open-source speech recognition component that never fetches anything at runtime, the built-in speech models, and open-licensed typefaces and icons. Everything is locked with checksums in the build process. There is no automatic updating either, so new versions are installed manually or via MDM.

Recognition for Norwegian, Swedish and Danish ships with the app itself and works without a network connection from the first launch. For certain other languages the app may ask macOS to fetch a language add-on: the download is performed by the operating system outside the app and covers the add-on only, never audio or text from your material. The download is attempted once per language per app session, and is cut off after 60 seconds; and if it fails the media file is set aside with an explanation. A machine used for this may therefore contact Apple the one time such an add-on is missing. That belongs in your assessment.

Output goes into a folder kept out of the search index macOS builds across the machine, until you choose otherwise. There are two local logs: the system log and a per-run diagnostics file. They hold timestamps, file names, paths and outcomes, never text from the documents, and retention defaults to 90 days. Note that file names alone are often sensitive in board work and disputes; set the retention period with that in mind. Passwords for encrypted PDFs are held in memory only for the length of the job. Note also that the guarantee for excluded words covers content: file and folder names are kept for traceability, and the index register warns when a name contains an excluded phrase.

A document can be built to exploit the program that opens it, so no source file is trusted. ZIP archives are unpacked within fixed limits and checked against the archive’s own checksum, encrypted files without a supplied password and unknown formats are refused rather than misread, shortcuts to files elsewhere are never followed, and HTML is read with network fetching switched off, so a purpose-built file cannot pull anything in from outside.

Three routes sit outside the app’s control, and they belong in an assessment. The clipboard can be read by every program on the machine, and with Handoff on, its contents can turn up on the user’s other Apple devices. Backup and sync copy the datasets off the machine like any other file. And the datasets themselves are as sensitive as the originals: where they live should be somebody’s deliberate decision.

The DMG and ZIP edition is signed with a developer certificate issued by Apple and inspected by Apple through notarisation, and the downloads come with a checksum the recipient can recompute and compare. Output is also deterministic: the same source material produces byte-identical files. The installer package for central deployment is not signed the same way today. Jamf, Kandji and Mosyle will install it regardless, while Intune requires a signed package: ask for a signed package before deploying that way. The entitlement list can be verified for every version you adopt, but the checking is yours, not automatic.