Cadence: AI Voice Dictation
Privacy Policy
Cadence is a dictation app for macOS made by Engcraft (‘we’, ‘us’). It turns your speech into text on your Mac and types it where your cursor is. This page explains what information Cadence handles, what stays on your Mac, and the very little that does not. The short version: your voice and your words never leave your Mac. There is no account, no cloud transcription and no server of ours involved in dictation. By using Cadence you agree to the practices described here. Terms used in this policy have the same meaning as in our Terms of Use.
Information Collection and Use
Cadence does not require an account and does not ask you for any personal information. Speech recognition runs entirely on your Mac using an on-device model. Audio is processed in memory and is never recorded, stored or uploaded. The text Cadence produces is inserted into the app you are using and, if History is on, saved in a local database inside Cadence’s sandboxed container on your Mac. Your dictionary, snippets and per-app rules are stored the same way. None of this is sent to us or to anyone else.
Cadence uses two third-party services that may receive limited, non-personal information:
- RevenueCat, to manage your subscription. It receives an anonymous app user ID and your purchase status from Apple. It never sees your audio or text.
- Amplitude, for anonymous usage analytics: event names such as ‘dictation completed’ together with the engine, language, duration and latency. Transcripts, audio and file names are never included. Turn on Privacy mode in Settings ▸ History to disable analytics entirely.
Speech, Text and History
The speech model (NVIDIA Parakeet) is downloaded once, on first launch, and then runs offline. While you hold the dictation key, audio from your microphone is streamed to the model in memory and discarded as soon as the text is produced. If you keep History on, each dictation’s text, the name of the app it was typed into, the language and its duration are stored locally so you can search and reuse them. You can delete individual entries, clear everything, or set an automatic retention period in Settings ▸ History. Audio is never stored.
Permissions
Cadence asks macOS for the permissions it needs to work: Microphone (to hear you), Input Monitoring (to notice when you hold the dictation key), Accessibility (to press ⌘V so the text lands at your cursor) and, as a fallback for the same paste, Automation of System Events. These permissions are used only for those purposes. Cadence does not read the contents of other apps, does not take screenshots and does not log your keystrokes. The key monitor only watches for the dictation key you chose.
Network Activity
Cadence connects to the internet for exactly three things: downloading the speech model on first launch (from our content delivery network or Hugging Face), checking your subscription status with Apple and RevenueCat, and, unless Privacy mode is on, sending anonymous analytics events to Amplitude. No audio, text, clipboard contents or file names are ever transmitted. Each of these providers has its own privacy policy: Apple (apple.com/legal/privacy), RevenueCat (revenuecat.com/privacy) and Amplitude (amplitude.com/privacy).
Security
Everything Cadence stores lives inside its sandboxed app container on your Mac, protected by your macOS user account and by FileVault if you use it. Your subscription status is kept in the macOS Keychain. Because nothing is transmitted to our servers, there is no server-side copy of your data to protect or to breach.
Links to Other Sites
Cadence and this website may contain links to other sites, such as Apple’s subscription management page. Those sites are not operated by us and have their own privacy policies, which we encourage you to review.
Children's Privacy
Cadence is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us and we will delete it.
Changes to This Privacy Policy
We may update this policy from time to time and will post any changes on this page. This policy is effective as of 2026-09-13.
Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, contact us at support@engcraft.io.