Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 18, 2026

WaveOne is a native macOS app that turns your speech into text and inserts it at your cursor. WaveOne has no servers of its own, requires no account, and collects no personal data. This policy explains how your information is handled.

The short version

• We do not run any backend. WaveOne talks only to Apple and to the services you set up yourself.
• We do not collect, transmit, sell, or share your personal data. Our App Store privacy label is Data Not Collected.
• Speech recognition is on-device only, so your audio is never uploaded, to us or to anyone else. Audio recordings are off by default.
• Translation and polishing also run on your Mac by default. Text is sent to a cloud service only if you enable one and agree to it first.
• Your API keys and secrets are stored in the macOS Keychain on your device.
• There is no analytics, advertising, or third-party tracking in the app.

Information we collect

None. WaveOne does not have an account system and does not send your data to us. We have no analytics SDKs, no crash-reporting services, and no advertising. The developer of WaveOne never receives your audio, your dictated text, your vocabulary, your credentials, or usage information.

WaveOne does not monitor your keyboard either. Its shortcuts are registered individually with macOS, so it is told about the combinations you assigned and about nothing else you type. It does not read the contents of your screen, and it does not read documents in other apps.

Your voice

WaveOne recognizes speech on your Mac, and only on your Mac: with Apple's built-in speech engine on macOS 26, and with a compact model downloaded once to your device on macOS 15 through 25. The audio is never uploaded, for recognition or for anything else, and no setting changes that, because there is no cloud recognition option to switch to.

Hearing you uses the macOS Microphone permission, which WaveOne asks for the first time you dictate and you grant in System Settings. The microphone is open only while a dictation is running. Audio recordings are off by default: while they are off no audio file is written at all, and when you turn them on they are kept inside the app's sandbox container, where you can see what they take up and delete all of them at once.

Translation and polishing

Both are optional, and both run on your Mac by default: translation through Apple's built-in translation framework, polishing through Apple's on-device model. In that mode your text never leaves the machine.

If you enable a cloud engine (for example DeepL, Google, Microsoft, Tencent, Baidu, Youdao, Alibaba, Volcano Engine, Amazon, OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, an aggregator such as OpenRouter, or a local model via Ollama or LM Studio), WaveOne names the destination and asks you to agree before the first request. From then on only the text you asked to be translated or polished is sent, directly from your Mac to that provider, with your own API key and no relay server in between. Your audio is never sent, because recognition has already happened on your Mac. Every destination you agreed to is listed under Settings ▸ Privacy and can be revoked, which puts the feature back on the on-device engine. The handling of text you send to a cloud engine is governed by that provider's own terms and privacy policy.

Credentials and secrets

API keys, access tokens, and secrets you enter for your engines, and a proxy password if you configure one, are stored in the macOS Keychain on your device. They are used only to authenticate requests to the service they belong to and are never sent anywhere else. They are not transmitted to the developer, and they are never included in an unencrypted backup.

Data stored on your device

WaveOne keeps your settings, shortcuts, vocabulary and dictation history locally on your Mac, inside the app's sandbox container. Your history holds the text of each dictation, so you can find it again, correct a word, or copy it. This data stays on your device. You can clear the history, remove all stored keys, reset all settings, or export an encrypted backup from the app's settings.

Anything you dictate into a password field is left out of all of it: WaveOne does not type into a secure field, marks what it puts on the clipboard as concealed, and writes no history entry for it.

Purchases and subscriptions

WaveOne is free to try for 14 days, with no purchase and no account required. After that you can continue with an auto-renewing monthly or yearly subscription, or with a one-time purchase, handled entirely through Apple's StoreKit and the App Store. Apple processes the transaction and any renewals; WaveOne does not receive or store your payment details, and it never sees your Apple Account. Subscriptions renew until you cancel them in your App Store account settings, not in the app. Entitlement checks read Apple-signed receipts on your device. Please see Apple's Privacy Policy for how Apple handles App Store transactions.

Network connections

WaveOne makes network connections only to (1) the translation or polishing services you configure, in order to perform the actions you request, (2) the host that serves the on-device speech model, to download it once on macOS 15 through 25, and (3) Apple, for App Store and in-app purchase functionality. It makes no other outbound connections. If you point an engine at a local server such as Ollama or LM Studio, that connection stays on your own machine or network. If you configure a proxy, requests to cloud services follow it.

Children's privacy

WaveOne is not directed to children and does not knowingly collect any information from anyone, including children under 13.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted on this page with a new "Last updated" date.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your privacy? Email support@waveone.app.