What leaves your Mac, and what never does
Speech recognition runs on your Mac, and audio never leaves it. Text goes to Anthropic only for the AI step, in the private beta with the tester's own key. MicJot has no telemetry, no analytics and, in version 0.3.1, no accounts.
Where recognition runs
Recognition is on-device, and only on-device: the recording is transcribed by a Whisper model running on your Mac through Core ML and the Neural Engine, and the audio does not leave the Mac. There is no cloud engine to choose. Recordings are never written to disk. When “Keep the microphone ready” is on (the default), the microphone stays open for 90 seconds after a dictation (30 seconds to 3 minutes in Settings → Dictation) and keeps a rolling 250 milliseconds, so the next dictation starts instantly; that standby audio is discarded continuously and the macOS microphone indicator stays on for the whole standby.
What leaves your Mac, and when
MicJot 0.3.1 contacts other computers only in these cases. Each is off until you turn it on, or is a download you asked for.
| When | What is sent | To whom |
|---|
| The AI step runs with your own Anthropic API key (dictation cleanup, Command mode, Polish; in the private beta the key field exists in QA builds only, under Settings → Writing → QA build only) | The recognised transcript (or, for Command mode and Polish, your instruction and the selected text), the frontmost app's name and category, your tone and language settings, up to 200 words from your dictionary and, if “Use text near the cursor” is on, up to 600 characters before the cursor. Nothing for excluded apps, password fields or while Secure Event Input is on. | Anthropic (api.anthropic.com), with your key, over HTTPS. Anthropic's API data policy applies; MicJot has no account there. |
| Downloading the speech model (setup, or Retry after a failed download) | A download request for the model files, pinned to one published version with every file's size and SHA-256 checked. | Hugging Face (huggingface.co) today; a MicJot-run mirror later. The request carries no identifier beyond your IP address and a generic user agent. |
| Checking for updates (only in builds with an update feed; 0.3.1 has none) | A request for one small JSON file describing the newest version. No identifiers, no settings, no usage data. | This website's host. The DMG you choose to download is verified against a published checksum. |
Everything else stays on your Mac: history, dictionary, snippets, settings, the event log (which never contains what you said) and crash reports. Audio is never among the things sent: no cloud transcription exists in the app. In a QA build, your own Anthropic key is stored in secrets.json in MicJot's support folder (readable only by you) and sent only to Anthropic.
Coming with accounts, not in 0.3.1
Accounts and MicJot AI, the hosted writing option, are planned for the public release and described here so the design is on record before it ships. When they exist:
| When | What is sent | To whom |
|---|---|---|
| You sign in to a MicJot account (the first setup screen; dictation itself never contacts the server) | Your email address or the identity from Google or Apple sign-in, this Mac's name, model, macOS and MicJot version, and a device token. | MicJot's account service, run on Cloudflare. It stores an email, identity-provider subjects, a plan, device names and token counts: never a transcript, prompt, completion, audio file, card number or password. |
| MicJot AI runs (within the free words, on the trial or on Pro) | The same data as the AI-step row above, through MicJot's proxy, with MicJot's key. | Anthropic, via MicJot's server. The proxy forwards and forgets; it records token counts only. Anthropic deletes API inputs and outputs within 30 days by default, except content its automated trust-and-safety systems flag under its Usage Policy (kept up to 2 years, with classifier scores up to 7 years) and what the law requires it to keep (Anthropic: how long is personal data stored). It does not train on API data by default, except material a user explicitly submits as feedback, which the proxy never submits (Anthropic: is my data used for training). A zero-data-retention agreement is granted per organisation subject to Anthropic's approval and still keeps safety-classifier results (Anthropic: zero retention); the status will be stated here as requested, granted or not granted, never as “available”. |
| You pay for a plan | Name, address, card details and tax information, entered on the payment provider's checkout. | Paddle, the merchant of record. MicJot never sees card numbers. |
What the hosts can see
This website, the download files and the update feed are static files on Cloudflare. Cloudflare sees the IP address and user agent of each request, as any host does; Hugging Face sees the same for model downloads. MicJot sends no identifiers of its own and this site sets no cookies.
What this website does not do
- No analytics, no tracking pixels, no cookies, no fonts or scripts from third parties. The page headers forbid the browser to load anything from another origin (
Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'none'; script-src 'self'; …). - Two small scripts, about 15 KB together, animate the demos, the navigation and the FAQ; they talk to no server and every page works without them.
- When the account pages exist they will set one essential cookie, on their own host, for the signed-in session only.
On your Mac
| Data | Location | How to delete |
|---|---|---|
| Settings | ~/Library/Application Support/MicJot/settings.json | Delete the file |
| History (your dictations' text) | ~/Library/Application Support/MicJot/history.json, mode 0600 | Delete entries from Home's transcript list, “Delete all history…” or “Save dictation history” off in Settings → Privacy, or delete the file |
| Dictionary, snippets | …/MicJot/dictionary.json, …/MicJot/snippets.json | Edit in MicJot, or delete the files |
| Speech models | …/MicJot/Models | Delete the folder; MicJot re-downloads when needed |
| Event log, crash reports | …/MicJot/Logs (7 days), …/MicJot/Diagnostics | Delete the folders |
| Compiled model cache | ~/Library/Caches/com.micjot.MicJot | Delete the folder; macOS rebuilds it |
| Your own Anthropic key (QA builds only; customer builds store no key) | ~/Library/Application Support/MicJot/secrets.json, mode 0600 | Remove it under Settings → Writing → QA build only in a QA build, or delete the file |
The support folder is readable only by you (mode 0700) and excluded from backups. The privacy controls page explains history retention, excluded apps and Private dictation.
The legal text
This page explains; the privacy policy binds. It is marked as a draft for legal review and carries its own last-updated date; it is rendered from the same source document the app bundles.