Core architecture
The built-in system speech recognition engine integrated directly into Apple operating systems.
Comparison
Tyne vs Apple Dictation
Free, instant and already on your Mac — and it will faithfully type every “um” you say.
At a glance
- Where audio is processed
- Apple DictationOn device (Apple Neural Engine)
- TyneOn device — WhisperKit on the same ANE
- Delay to your cursor
- Apple DictationInstant
- TyneUnder 400ms
- Works offline
- Apple DictationYes
- TyneYes, fully
- Cleans up filler and false starts
- Apple DictationNo — types them verbatim
- TyneLocal Qwen 2.5 inference
- Remembers past notes
- Apple DictationNone
- TyneEncrypted SQLite vault (AES-256)
- Price
- Apple DictationFree with macOS
- TyneUnlimited dictation free forever · Plus $6/month
Apple Dictation
Tyne
How Apple Dictation works
Under the hood
Uses Apple’s proprietary on-device speech models powered by the Apple Neural Engine to map spoken phonemes directly into the active text buffer.
What Apple Dictation does well
- Pre-installed on every Mac and iPhone at zero cost.
- Runs entirely on-device on modern Apple Silicon hardware.
- Instant cursor streaming with zero network latency.
Where it breaks down
Literal acoustic transcription
Does not understand context. Every stutter, mid-sentence false start, and grammatical error is typed verbatim onto your screen.
Zero post-processing
Incapable of resolving corrections — saying “Tuesday… wait, make that Thursday” types out the entire mistake instead of fixing it.
No cognitive memory
Retains no memory of past notes, projects, or context. It is a passive microphone-to-text converter.
Pricing
Apple Dictation
Free, included with macOS and iOS.
Tyne
Unlimited dictation, free forever. Plus is $6/month or $49/year; Pro is $14/month or $119/year.
See full pricingWhy Tyne wins
Apple Dictation forces you to spend time manually editing out stutters and punctuation mistakes. Tyne runs WhisperKit and Qwen 2.5 on the exact same Apple Silicon hardware to output polished, production-ready text while indexing facts and action items into your personal vault.
Runs on your Mac. Nothing leaves it.Download for Mac