Dictate privacy

Arc Forge. Dictate is a free Arc Forge desktop app for Windows 11 and Linux that types dictated text into the focused app on your computer.

Local-first. Dictate transcribes on your device. It does not include Arc Forge telemetry, advertising, or automatic crash upload, and it does not send your audio or text to Arc Forge. It also switches off the usage telemetry built into the third-party libraries it includes.

What Arc Forge may see. We may receive indirect download, install, release, website, app-store, GitHub, npm, support, and bug-report information depending on where you get Dictate and what you choose to send us.

General policy. This page supplements the main Arc Forge Privacy Policy.

User-initiated capture. Dictate uses microphone input only when you actively dictate, such as through push-to-talk or an explicit command.

Raw audio. Dictate processes microphone audio for transcription and does not intentionally retain raw microphone audio. During a meeting recording (beta), audio is written to a temporary file in your system’s temp folder while it is processed, then deleted.

Local transcription. The default speech model is NVIDIA Parakeet TDT 0.6B, run on your device with ONNX Runtime and included with the desktop app. Audio is not sent to Arc Forge or anyone else.

No hosted transcription. Dictate has no hosted or cloud transcription option and does not use provider API keys.

Meeting transcription (beta). On the beta update channel, Dictate can label speakers in a meeting on your device using pyannote.audio and the pyannote speaker-diarization-community-1 model, both included with the app. Microsoft Store installs use the stable channel, which does not show this feature.

Settings. Dictate stores local configuration such as custom words, spelling substitutions, your shortcut, model and device choices, and update channel.

Recent history. Dictate keeps your last 20 dictations as a local recent transcript history so you can recover or copy them. This history is stored on your device.

Notes. Saved notes and meeting transcripts are stored as text on your device, without audio, until you remove them.

Logs. Dictate writes local logs for troubleshooting: app status, errors, model names, and environment details. Logs do not include the text you dictate; a finished dictation or note is recorded by its length only.

Models and cache. Speech and speaker models, model preparation state, and related downloaded data are stored on your device.

No API keys. Dictate does not ask for or store provider API keys.

Third-party telemetry off. Two libraries Dictate includes send usage data to their developers by default. ONNX Runtime, which runs the speech model, reports to Microsoft. pyannote.audio, the speaker-labelling library behind the beta meeting feature, reports to pyannote. Dictate turns both off, along with Hugging Face Hub telemetry, before any of them load.

Earlier versions. Dictate 2026.9.27 and earlier did not turn these off. When those versions transcribed, ONNX Runtime sent usage events to Microsoft (mobile.events.data.microsoft.com): session and timing information with a device identifier it stores under ~/.cache/Microsoft/DeveloperTools/.onnxruntime. The beta meeting feature sent the pipeline name and version, a session identifier, audio duration, and speaker-count settings to otel.pyannote.ai. Neither included audio or text. Updating stops both; you can delete that .onnxruntime folder to remove what ONNX Runtime stored.

Hugging Face tokens. Desktop builds include the models they need. If you run Dictate from source and use the meeting feature without the included model, Dictate may read a Hugging Face token from your environment or Hugging Face token file to download the gated pyannote model. Keep tokens private and remove them before sharing logs, screenshots, or config files.

Distribution platforms. If you download Dictate through GitHub, npm, Microsoft Store, or another platform, that platform may provide Arc Forge with aggregate download, install, update, crash, certification, or listing analytics.

Update checks. Installs outside the Microsoft Store check GitHub release and tag endpoints when Dictate starts, and the beta channel also checks the npm registry. Microsoft Store installs are updated through the Store. These requests are handled by GitHub, npm, or Microsoft under their own terms and privacy practices.

Model downloads. Dictate downloads model files from Hugging Face only when you choose a model or setting that is not included with the app.

Website analytics. If you visit Arc Forge pages about Dictate, normal website analytics and server logs may apply as described in the main Arc Forge Privacy Policy.

No in-app ads. Dictate is not designed to show advertising or sell behavioural advertising data.

Issue reports. If you open a GitHub issue, send support email, submit a form, or share screenshots, logs, or examples, Arc Forge receives the information you include.

Review before sharing. Logs do not include the text you dictate, but check them for Hugging Face tokens, file paths, and private names before posting or sending them. Remove confidential text from screenshots and examples too.

Security reports. Report security issues through the Dictate repository’s private vulnerability reporting path when available, or contact Arc Forge without public exploit details.

Support links. Dictate support currently runs through GitHub issues and hello@arcforge.au.

Uninstall options. The Linux and Windows uninstall scripts remove app files, and their remove-user-data option also removes local config, logs, recent history, notes, and downloaded model data. Removing the Linux .deb package leaves your user data in place.

Manual removal. Local state is stored in platform app-data folders such as %APPDATA%\dictate, %LOCALAPPDATA%\dictate, ~/.config/dictate, and ~/.local/share/dictate.

In the app. Clear notes empties the recent history. Saved notes can be archived in the app, or deleted from the data folder.

Third-party notices. Dictate third-party software and model notices are published at arcforge.au/legal/notices.

Arc Forge requests. Email hello@arcforge.au for privacy requests about support messages, forms, or other information Arc Forge holds. Last updated 30 September 2026.