You will not
remember
this call.
It will
remember
itself.
Diktator records your calls, writes them up, and files them under the people and projects they belong to. Plain text files, in a folder you chose, that outlive the app that wrote them.
Zoom, Meet, Teams, FaceTime, a call in a browser tab. Anything that makes sound on your Mac. Nothing joins as a guest, and nothing leaves.
Dictation free forever, no account. Which Macs, in the questions below.
The file
This is what one person looks like after three calls. You wrote the top. Everything under the line wrote itself.
---
description: Design lead at Halden
aliases: [Rosa]
---
# Rosa Iversen
Runs design at Halden. Hates meetings that could have been a note.
Introduced by Petra.
## Calls
- 2026-03-14 [[2026-03-14 1030 Pricing page, second pass]] wants the tiers cut to two
- 2026-03-02 [[2026-03-02 1615 Halden kickoff]] agreed scope, she owns the copy
- 2026-02-19 [[2026-02-19 0915 First call]] intro, found us through Petra
Sample page, invented people. The shape is the app's.
Nobody presses
anything
It notices
The call begins on your own machine and recording starts there. A dot in the menu bar shows while it runs, and Stop is in the same menu.
It separates
It keeps your voice and their voice apart, so the write up knows who said what instead of guessing.
It files
A note for the call, then a line on the page for each person and each project. The index of the whole archive updates itself.
It can always tell you from them. It cannot always tell them from each other. When two people are on the far end, their voices arrive together and the app has to work out which one is talking, the same as every other tool does. On a crowded call it will sometimes put a line under the wrong name.
The archive
outlives
the software
Drag Diktator to the trash and nothing changes. Any editor still opens it. There is no proprietary database, because there is no database.
Plain text, your folder
Names you can read, sitting where you put them. Open one in any app that opens text, today or in twenty years.
Your prose is untouched
When a call touches a page you wrote, it adds to one section it owns and leaves your own words exactly where they were.
Recordings live elsewhere
Recordings are kept apart from your notes, so the folder you read stays small and quiet. Buy a licence and the only thing that ever leaves is the check on the key.
Dictation,
in the innocent
sense
Hold a key and talk. The words land wherever your cursor already is: the message you were halfway through, the search bar, the email you have been putting off.
Any app, no exceptions
It types where you are typing. It does not care which app that is and it never asks you to paste anything.
Nothing to meter
No account, no word count, no monthly allowance. There is nothing to meter when it all happens on your own machine.
Free, and staying free
Not a trial and not a teaser. Every other tool charges for this, which is the reason we do not.
This is the sense of the word you can admit to at parties. The other sense is further up this page, quietly keeping a file on everyone you meet.
The archive is yours
Citizenship
Civilian
Free, foreverDictation into any app, without limit, no account. Your first ten calls recorded, written up and filed. Everything stays on your Mac.
Written summaries need one free extra download, set up once. The app walks you through it.
Citizen
$9 / moEverything above, and the calls stop being counted. Every call recorded, transcribed and filed on its own.
Not open yet. It opens when the fifty founding places are taken.
Founding citizen
$49 onceFifty places. Everything Citizen has, for as long as the app exists, for less than one year of it costs.
Lifetime means lifetime, because nothing runs on our servers. There is no bill for us to pass on to you.
A number appears here when there is one worth showing
Questions
Is this legal where I live?
No idea. Neither does your laptop.
Recording law varies. Some places need everyone on the call to agree, some only need you, and a few care where the other person is sitting rather than where you are. Look it up once, then decide.
What we can tell you is where the recording goes: nowhere. It is written to a folder on your Mac and it stays there. There is no server to subpoena.
The archive is yours. So is the judgement call.
What languages does it handle?
Most of them. It works out what each person is speaking on its own, so a call where you speak Polish and the other person speaks English comes out as two languages rather than one bad guess. If it gets that wrong, you can send the call back through in a language you name.
What is the extra download for summaries?
Ollama. It is free, it runs the AI on your own Mac rather than sending anything out, and you install it once. Diktator fetches what it needs by itself after that.
Recording, transcription, filing and dictation all work without it. It is the written summary that needs it.
What does it need to run?
A Mac with Apple silicon, on macOS 14.2 or later. If you bought it new from late 2020 onward it almost certainly qualifies: the Apple menu, then About This Mac, will say Apple M1 or better under Chip.
What format are the notes in, and will Obsidian read them?
Markdown, with the links between pages written the way Obsidian expects, so it reads the folder as it stands with nothing to import. If you do not use Obsidian this costs you nothing: they are text files with names you can read.
How is this different from Summit, Quietly, Granola?
They record calls on your machine and write plain files, and they do it well. What they leave to you is the page per person and per project that every conversation files itself into. That is the part that compounds.
Does it work on my iPhone?
Dictation is coming. Call capture is not, and will not be: iOS does not let any app record a call, ours included.