Transcription software for Mac, built around Apple Silicon

Dalm is transcription software for Mac: dictation in any app, and notes from calls and from meetings in a room. It is built for Apple Silicon because speech is recognised on the Mac’s Neural Engine, and it needs macOS 15.0 or newer: it records the sound of other apps with a macOS system feature, which is how it hears a call. No audio is sent anywhere; the text is synced to our servers automatically, and a language model writes meeting summaries from it. It does not run on Intel Macs or on Windows. There is a Free plan.

Three parts of the Mac the app is built on

Three things the Mac gives the app decide what it can do. The Neural Engine in Apple Silicon is where speech is turned into text, and the text, not the audio, is what goes on to our servers. A macOS system feature lets the app record the sound that other apps play, which is how it hears the other side of a call; the permission for it is called “System audio recording”, not Screen Recording. And the Accessibility permission lets it type your words into whatever app you are in. Without the first there is no recognition on this Mac; without the second, a call has only you in it; without the third, dictation has nowhere to land.

The Neural Engine, and what goes to our servers

On first launch the app downloads a speech model and gets it ready for your Mac. From then on, speech is recognised on the Neural Engine, and the voices in a meeting are told apart on the Mac too. No audio is sent anywhere, and the audio is deleted once the text exists. The text is what travels: dictations and transcripts are synced to our servers automatically, so they are there on every Mac you sign in to, and no setting turns the sync off. A language model reads the text of a meeting to write its summary; dictations are not sent to it. How much the first launch downloads is on system requirements, and what goes where, piece by piece, on privacy.

Why there is no Intel or Windows version

The app is built for Apple Silicon only: its speech recognition needs the Neural Engine, and Intel Macs do not have one. A Windows or Android version would be a different product rather than a port, because the app is built on frameworks that exist only on macOS. Whether your particular Mac will run it — processor, system, what the first launch downloads — is answered in one place: system requirements.

macOS 15.0: hearing the other side of a call

The other person’s voice comes out of your speakers, not through your microphone, so to hear a call the app records the sound of other apps as a second stream, next to your microphone. It does this with a macOS system feature, and the app is built for macOS 15.0 or newer. When Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack or FaceTime starts using the microphone, a notification offers to record; Google Meet in a browser is recognised while a calendar event with a call link is running. Nothing joins the call, so telling the others is up to you. In a room there is no second stream, and the voices are told apart from the microphone alone.

Accessibility: typing into any app

Hold the right ⌘ key, speak and let go: the words are typed into the field where your cursor is, in any app with a text field. The app types rather than pastes, so what you copied stays on the clipboard and the keyboard layout does not matter; that is what the Accessibility permission is for, and macOS opens the right place in System Settings for you. If there is nowhere to type, the dictation is kept and can be copied from the widget. How dictation works key by key, and whether the dictation built into macOS is enough, is on the dictation page.

Made for the Mac: menu bar, ⌘K, Spotlight, Shortcuts

Dalm lives in the menu bar, with a narrow widget that by default shows only while you record and never takes the focus. ⌘K searches meetings and dictations from one field and runs commands. Meetings and dictations appear in Spotlight by name, description and date — not the full transcript — and that can be switched off. Siri and Shortcuts can start a dictation or a meeting, stop a recording, open a meeting or show the latest summary. The Share menu sends a summary as text to Mail, Messages, Notes or AirDrop, and ⌘P prints it. The app follows the system’s light or dark appearance and Reduce Motion.

Everything you say lands in one archive you can search: meetings, phone calls, conversations in the room, and what you dictate to a model.

Free, Pro or Team on your Mac

Dictation, recording a call or a meeting in a room with its transcript and summary, and transcribing a file you bring in come with the Free plan, and Free is a plan rather than a trial. Dalm needs a Mac with Apple Silicon · macOS 15.0 or later and an account; while it is not public, the way in is the waitlist. What the paid plans add is on the pricing page. If a team should share one dictionary and one set of templates while each person’s dictations stay their own, see working as a team.