--- title: "Mac dictation that runs offline, with no word cap and no account" description: "Gobbl transcribes speech on your Mac with Whisper, no account and no word cap. Three cleanup modes, with audio that never leaves your computer." date: "2026-10-10" app: gobbl readingTime: "6 min read" image: "/img/build/gobbl/notch-home.jpg" imageAlt: "Gobbl's notch home tab, showing Gob the pet with a level indicator, Now Playing with track controls, and the next calendar event with a Join button." --- Gobbl's dictation transcribes speech using Whisper running on your Mac. Audio never leaves the computer, there's no account to create, and nothing caps how much you can dictate. To use it, hold the right Option key (Gobbl calls this the Gobbl key) and speak. Release the key and the transcription lands in whatever text field was active: a Slack draft, a GitHub comment, a terminal, a text editor. The text arrives as keystrokes, so every app that accepts typing accepts dictation. Nothing about the receiving app needs to change. ## Three cleanup modes Raw speech rarely reads the way you want it written. Gobbl gives you three levels of cleanup, and you set the default in preferences. **Verbatim** gives you exactly what you said, filler words and all. This is useful when you want to capture your exact phrasing: a quoted statement, legal text, or speech you plan to transcribe manually. **Light** is the default. It strips filler words and fixes punctuation on the Mac, with no network request at all. You get clean prose without sending anything out. For everyday typing this is where most dictation lands. **Polish with AI** goes further, rewriting the text into clearer writing and catching awkward constructions that filler-stripping alone misses. This mode sends the finished text, not the audio, to Xeve's AI service. Gobbl's site says that service doesn't retain the data, and each request appears in Gobbl's local log. Because Polish with AI is an AI feature, it is free during the beta and will become part of a paid plan later. ![Gobbl's tools tab with a 25-minute focus timer, keep awake, mute mic, pick colour, screen text, quiet pet and share Gob controls](/img/build/gobbl/notch-tools.jpg) *The tools tab, with the mute mic control alongside focus timer, colour picker and other quick tools.* ## What stays on your Mac The transcription is the private part. When you first use dictation, Gobbl downloads a Whisper model. Three options are available: Whisper Small at [about 480 MB](https://gobbl.xeve.io/dictation) is the recommended default; Whisper Base at [about 150 MB](https://gobbl.xeve.io/dictation) is faster and smaller; Whisper Turbo at [about 630 MB](https://gobbl.xeve.io/dictation) is the most accurate, though a bit slower. After the initial download, every Verbatim or Light transcription runs entirely locally. The audio is recorded, passed to Whisper, and discarded. What reaches your app is text that was never a network packet. Gobbl's dictation page puts the speed at [about 0.5 s per sentence](https://gobbl.xeve.io/dictation) on Apple silicon. That holds up for everyday speech: dictate a sentence or two, wait half a second, and the words appear. It doesn't feel like waiting. ## Apple silicon only Dictation isn't available on Intel Macs. Whisper Small runs at that speed because of the Neural Engine in M-series chips. On Intel hardware the same model runs several times slower, which makes it feel broken rather than slow, so Gobbl doesn't offer it there. If you're on an M1 or later running macOS 14 Sonoma or later, it works out of the box. ## Custom words, language lock and hands-free mode If your work involves terms that speech recognition gets wrong — library names, product names, acronyms with unusual pronunciation — you can add them to a custom word list. The recogniser picks them up across all three modes. Language lock keeps dictation in one language even when you switch keyboard layouts, which matters if you type in multiple scripts but only want to dictate in one. Hands-free mode starts a new dictation automatically after the previous one ends, so a long piece can be captured without touching the keyboard at all. ![Gobbl's notch chat, answering "What's on today?" and confirming a 5:00 PM reminder](/img/build/gobbl/notch-chat.jpg) *Chat in the notch, answering "What's on today?" and setting a 5:00 PM reminder.* ## No word cap Some dictation apps meter transcription on free tiers. [Gobbl's comparison page](https://gobbl.xeve.io/compare/) notes that Wispr Flow's free desktop tier caps at 2,000 words a week, with its Pro plan at $15 a month. Gobbl's dictation has no word cap for Verbatim and Light, because the transcription runs on your hardware and has no server cost to meter. ## How it fits the Gobbl key Dictation is one gesture of three on the Gobbl key. A tap writes or rewrites whatever is in the active text field. A double-tap opens edit mode, with options to shorten, clarify or adjust tone. Holding it down dictates. Between them these three gestures cover most of what you'd otherwise stop typing to do: rephrasing a clunky sentence, capturing a thought while it's fresh, or asking a quick question without switching apps. The write and rewrite gestures are AI features, free during the beta and will become paid later. Dictation in Verbatim or Light mode is not: it runs Whisper locally and has no plan attached. ## Getting started Gobbl is free and open source (MIT), and runs on macOS 14 or later on Apple silicon and Intel, though dictation requires Apple silicon. The download and more detail on how dictation works are at [gobbl.xeve.io](https://gobbl.xeve.io).