Privacy

Short version: your voice and the text you dictate stay on your Mac. hushtype has no account, no analytics and takes no screenshots. What it can send over the network goes to our licence server: your licence key when you activate, download or sign out, and the signed licence when it re-checks it. The only other connection is one you ask for: the accurate engine's files, downloaded once, which sends nothing about you. In short, the network is used for the licence check and one optional model download.

Your voice

• While you hold the dictation or command key (or record a meeting), the microphone is on. If you switch on always-listening for voice commands, it stays on until you switch it off, and macOS shows its orange dot. Otherwise it is off.
• While always-listening is on, speech is recognised on the Mac and only sentences that start with your wake phrase, or come right after a command, do anything. The rest is dropped at once. Nothing heard is kept.
• Your Mac's own speech recognition turns the audio into text, with network recognition switched off. If the Mac has no on-device model for your language, hushtype says so and does not fall back to a server.
• Audio is not saved. It is kept in memory only while it is being recognised.
• Accurate engine (optional): if you download it, the audio is read by that model on your Mac instead of Apple's recogniser. It never leaves the Mac either.
• Keep the microphone ready (off by default): if you switch it on, the microphone stays open for the minutes you chose after each dictation, macOS shows its orange dot, and only the last half second is held in memory so the start of your next dictation isn't cut. It is never written down or sent.
• Hush mode and live text work on the audio and the words in memory while you speak. Nothing extra is kept.
• Meeting notes also hear the sound your Mac plays. macOS lists this under Screen Recording; hushtype receives sound only, never the picture, and never captures the screen.

Voice commands

• Websites and web searches you ask for open in your own browser; hushtype itself makes no connection for them.
• Your own commands and imported command packs are stored on your Mac with your settings.
• Names on screen (off by default): if you switch it on, when a dictation starts hushtype reads the visible labels of the front window (names, titles, buttons) through Accessibility and gives them to the recogniser as words to listen for. It never reads password fields or the text you are typing, and nothing is kept.

Your text

• Recognised text is cleaned up on your Mac and typed into the app you are using. hushtype never types into password fields.
• If you keep history (you can turn it off), each dictation is stored in a file in ~/Library/Application Support/hushtype. Search and “Delete all” are in Settings.
• Meetings you record are saved in the same folder. You can delete them there or in the app.
• Your dictionary, snippets and settings are stored on your Mac. Importing and exporting words only reads and writes the files you choose.
• Stats are counts only (words, dictations, time, apps by bundle id, hour of day). They contain no text. Reset deletes them.
• While you dictate, the clipboard may briefly hold your text so it can be pasted; the previous contents are put back.

What it asks macOS for

• Microphone and Speech Recognition: to hear you and turn the sound into text on the Mac.
• Accessibility: to notice your dictation key, type into the app you use and carry out voice commands: key presses, clicks, moving windows and selecting text. To click by name or show numbers, it reads the names and positions of buttons and menus in the window in front at the moment you give the command, and keeps none of it. Whether macOS also lists Input Monitoring for the key monitor on your version is something we have not confirmed.
• Automation (System Events, Finder): asked once, when you first say restart, shut down, log out, dark mode or empty the Trash.
• Screen Recording: only for meeting mode, because macOS files system-sound capture under it. Sound only, never the picture.
• Reminders and Calendar: only when you press the follow-up buttons after a meeting.

What it keeps, and for how long

• Audio: never kept. A test scans the source to check that nothing writes it to disk. A video's sound track, when you transcribe a video file, is copied for recognition and deleted at once.
• Unsent text: cleaned text is saved as a draft before it is typed. If typing fails or the app stops, it waits in the menu, at most a day and at most 20 items, and is not written to disk for apps set to keep no history.
• History: your choice. Keep it, turn it off, auto-delete after 1, 7, 30 or 90 days, or set no history for single apps.
• Speed timings: timings only (the last 200 dictations), no text.
• Teach it: it does not watch other apps. It only sees the text you load into its window, and keeps what you press Add on, in your dictionary.
• Voice inbox, files and read-back: inbox notes and transcripts are files in the places you choose. Read-back uses the system voice on this Mac.
• Export or erase: one click exports everything. One click deletes history, meetings, stats and transcripts; the licence stays.

What the licence check sends

Apart from the optional model download below, this is the only network traffic the app can create, and only after you enter a licence key (or while a licence is active):

• When you activate: your licence key and a one-way ID of your Mac (a hash of its hardware identifier with a prefix; the identifier itself never leaves the Mac).
• When it re-checks (when the app starts and every few hours): the signed licence token it received before, which holds your plan, the one-way Mac ID and an expiry date.
• When you sign out of a Mac: that token, so the server frees the Mac's place for another Mac.
• When you press Download (in the app, on the install guide or on the thank-you page): your licence key. The server answers a download link that works for 10 minutes.
• As with any request, the server sees your network address and the time. It sends back a new signed token, or says the licence was refunded.
• No audio, no text, no history, no stats, no app names and no file names are ever part of it.

The licence is checked offline against a public key built into the app, so hushtype keeps working without a connection until the token expires; then it asks to check again.

The optional model download

• Only when you press “Get the accurate model” (or the fast one) in Settings › Engine and then confirm the question that says what will be downloaded.
• The app asks downloads.tealmac.com for the list of model files, then fetches them. Each file is checked against its published SHA-256 checksum; a file that doesn't match is deleted and never used.
• The requests carry no licence key, no account, no audio, no text and nothing about your Mac beyond what any download carries: your network address and the time, which the server sees as with any request.
• The files are stored in ~/Library/Application Support/hushtype/Models. Delete them in Settings › Engine at any time; Apple's recogniser is used again.

Plans, captions, typing that fits and nod to confirm

• Plans are made on the Mac: common requests by fixed rules, anything else by your Mac's own on-device model (macOS 26). The request, the plan and the list of files a plan would touch are shown to you and not kept. A plan can only open, arrange and quit apps, open folders and Settings panes, set Focus, dark mode and volume, and find, move, copy, rename or move files to the Trash inside your own folders. It never sends anything anywhere. What the last file plan did is remembered in memory until you quit, so “put the files back” can undo it.
• Live captions use the sound your Mac plays (no picture, never hushtype's own sound), recognised on the Mac. Translation uses macOS's own on-device translation; macOS may download a language pack itself, which is between you and macOS. The captions live in memory while they are on; nothing is written to disk unless you choose Save this transcript and pick a place.
• Typing that fits the field reads up to the number of characters set in Settings › Assist before the cursor in the field you are dictating into, once, when the dictation starts. Never a password field. It is used to fit that one dictation and then dropped; it is not saved, not in your history and never sent. You can switch it off, or off for single apps.
• Nod to confirm (off by default) reads head movement from AirPods or Beats that track it, only while a yes-or-cancel question is on screen, to tell a nod from a shake. The movement is never kept or sent. macOS asks once for Motion access.

What the licence server keeps

• For each Mac a key is activated on: the key, the one-way Mac ID and the payment provider's activation number, until you sign out of that Mac.
• For downloads: a one-way hash of each key and which product it is for, never the key itself in that list.
• To stop abuse: a count of download requests per hashed key and per hashed network address, deleted within an hour after its hour ends.
• For each order: the order number, email address, price and whether it was refunded.
• The server's request logs are switched off, so addresses and keys in requests are not kept there.

Buying

Checkout happens on our payment provider's page, which is the merchant of record: it handles your payment details and tax and sends you your receipt and licence key. We receive your email address, the order and the licence key, not your card details.

Automation

The links, Shortcuts actions and command-line tool only open the app and trigger the actions you named. They send nothing anywhere. A command that arrives by link always asks you first, and a link that asks to turn on always-listening opens a window where you choose.

This website

The site sets no cookies, runs no analytics and loads nothing from other companies. It is static pages. The key form on the install guide and the thank-you page send your licence key to our licence server only when you ask for a download, with no referrer; the thank-you page removes the key from its address as soon as it has read it.

Your rights

Ask us at hello@tealmac.com to see or delete what we hold about you (licence and order records). Everything else is on your Mac, where you can delete it yourself. Children under 13 (16 in the EU) should not buy hushtype without a parent.

If this policy changes, this page changes with a new date. See also the terms and the refund policy.