Guide
Does Mac dictation send your audio to Apple?
The honest answer is: usually not, sometimes yes, and Apple does not document exactly when.
The short answer
On an Apple Silicon Mac, keyboard dictation normally runs on-device. On an Intel Mac it does not — the audio goes to Apple's servers to be transcribed.
There are exceptions on Apple Silicon too: some languages are not supported on-device, and the "Improve Siri & Dictation" setting can send audio for review unless you turn it off.
What is actually true
- Apple Silicon, recent macOS: keyboard dictation runs on the Neural Engine, on the machine, for supported languages.
- Intel Macs: audio is sent to Apple to be transcribed. This is why dictation there needs an internet connection.
- Unsupported languages: fall back to server processing regardless of chip.
- Improve Siri & Dictation: a separate setting that can share audio for quality review. It is worth checking whether it is on.
None of that is a scandal. It is a reasonable design and Apple documents the broad shape of it. The awkward part is the last mile: Apple does not publish exactly which requests are handled on-device and which are not, so you cannot tell, at the moment you dictate, which one just happened.
When that matters
For most dictation it does not. Grocery lists and Slack replies are not worth thinking about.
It matters when you are subject to an obligation a settings page does not satisfy: client confidentiality, privilege, medical notes, unreleased work, an NDA, or data-residency rules. In those cases the question your obligations ask is not "is it encrypted" but "where did the audio go", and "usually on-device, sometimes not, and not documented" is a genuinely difficult answer to give.
Removing the question instead of answering it
Voz has no server. The Whisper model is inside the app bundle, the audio buffer is discarded as soon as it becomes text, and there is no account for anything to be attached to. There is no configuration that changes this, because there is nothing to configure.
You can verify it rather than trust it: turn on Airplane Mode and keep dictating. Nothing changes. That is a harder claim to make and an easier one to check.
To be fair to Apple
On a modern Mac, in a supported language, with Improve Siri & Dictation off, Apple's Dictation is on-device and free. For most people that is a perfectly good answer, and this page is an argument about certainty rather than about anyone's conduct.