Choosing a Dictation Engine: Apple, On-Device, or Cloud

One Hotkey, Text Wherever You're Typing

This is the second piece of dictation in Grafite: not meeting transcription, a separate, faster tool for getting words out of your head and into whatever you're working on. Press the global hotkey, ⌘⇧D on Mac (Ctrl+Shift+D on other platforms), speak, and the text lands directly wherever your cursor already is, an email draft, a Slack message, a doc, a form field. No switching apps, no copy-paste step. We covered the broader case for this kind of dictation, writing by voice across whatever app you're already in, in dictating across Slack, docs, and email. This post is about the specific choice Grafite gives you underneath that hotkey: which engine actually turns your voice into text.

Four Engines, One Toggle

Open the Dictation settings and you'll find four options: Auto, Apple Speech, On-Device Pro, and Grafite Cloud Pro. They're not just labels, they're genuinely different pieces of software with different trade-offs, and picking the right one for your situation is worth a minute of thought.

Apple Speech

This is macOS's own built-in dictation, running through the operating system rather than anything Grafite downloads or connects to. It uses almost no extra CPU, needs no download, and works the moment you select it. It's only available on macOS, and it stays available on your Mac even after other engines finish downloading, since it doesn't depend on anything Grafite installs.

On-Device Pro

This is a local speech recognition model that downloads once, roughly 650 MB, and then runs entirely on your machine from that point on, no network round-trip per utterance. It works across both Mac and PC, unlike Apple Speech, and once it's installed it's the fastest and most private option Grafite offers, since your voice never leaves the device. The download happens automatically in the background when the desktop app is running, or you can trigger it manually from the settings card.

Grafite Cloud Pro

This streams your dictation through Grafite's cloud engine instead of processing it locally. It's a Professional plan feature. The trade-off for sending audio to the cloud is generally stronger accuracy on tricky audio, background noise, quick speech, technical vocabulary, than a fully local model can match, plus no download or local storage footprint at all.

Auto

Left on Auto, Grafite picks for you, and the logic is straightforward once you know it: if On-Device Pro is already installed on this machine, Auto uses it. If it isn't installed yet but you're on a Mac, Auto uses Apple Speech in the meantime, since it needs no setup. If neither applies, Auto falls back to Grafite Cloud Pro. In other words, Auto prefers the local, private option once it's available, and picks the option that needs zero setup while you wait for it.

Why Auto Favors On-Device Once It's Ready

It's worth noticing that Auto doesn't default to Apple Speech permanently on a Mac, even though Apple Speech needs no download at all. Once On-Device Pro finishes installing, Auto switches to it. The reasoning is that On-Device Pro, once it's there, is generally the better dictation experience, and it works identically whether you're on a Mac or a PC, which makes it the one Grafite would rather have you land on by default. Apple Speech is the bridge while you wait, not the destination.

If you'd rather stay on Apple Speech permanently, because it's genuinely all you need or because you don't want the download, you can select it explicitly instead of leaving the preference on Auto. Auto only overrides your choice when you haven't made one.

A History You Can Actually Use

Every dictation you generate gets saved to a recent-dictations list in settings, not just the current session. You can look back at what you dictated, copy it again if you need to reuse a phrase, or delete individual entries you don't want kept around. This matters in the same way saved drafts matter elsewhere in Grafite: dictation is fast, which means you sometimes move on to the next thing before you've actually used what you just said. Having it saved means a dictation you spoke five minutes ago and then got distracted from isn't gone.

Picking Deliberately Instead of Leaving It on Auto

Auto is a reasonable default for most people, and it's built to get you to a decent outcome without thinking about it. But there are real reasons to override it:

Pick Apple Speech if you're on a Mac, don't want any extra download at all, and mostly dictate short, simple text where a slight accuracy edge from the other engines wouldn't matter much.

Pick On-Device Pro if privacy is the priority, you dictate sensitive material you don't want touching a network, or you're on a PC where Apple Speech isn't an option in the first place. It's also the right call if you dictate a lot and want consistent behavior across whatever machine you're on.

Pick Grafite Cloud Pro if you're on the Professional plan and you regularly dictate in noisy environments, at speed, or with technical or industry-specific vocabulary where a stronger model earns its keep. It's also worth trying if On-Device Pro's accuracy isn't quite hitting the mark for your particular voice or accent.

Stay on Auto if you just want it to work without managing it, and you're comfortable with the tool quietly upgrading itself from Apple Speech to On-Device Pro once the download finishes in the background.

What Actually Happens When the Download Isn't Ready Yet

If you explicitly select On-Device Pro before the model has finished downloading, Grafite doesn't just fail silently. On a Mac, it falls back to Apple Speech until the download completes, since that's already available with no wait. On a PC, where Apple Speech isn't an option, it falls back to Grafite Cloud Pro instead, assuming you're on a plan that includes it. Either way, dictation keeps working while the local model downloads in the background rather than leaving you stuck with nothing.

This matters because On-Device Pro is not a small file. At roughly 650 MB, it's not something you want to wait on before you can dictate a single sentence. The settings card shows a live download percentage so you can see progress, and once it finishes, anything set to On-Device Pro, whether you picked it directly or you're on Auto, starts using it without needing you to do anything else.

Two Different Dictation Habits Worth Building

Meeting transcription and hotkey dictation solve different problems, even though they're both voice-to-text under the hood. Meeting transcription runs continuously through a call you're already having. Hotkey dictation is something you reach for deliberately, mid-task, to avoid typing something out by hand. Once the hotkey becomes muscle memory, it tends to show up in more places than you'd expect: quick Slack replies, a first draft of an email, notes to yourself that would otherwise never get written down at all. For a broader look at dictation outside of meetings entirely, personal notes, brainstorming, ideas on the move, see voice notes beyond meetings.

Set up dictation in the Grafite Mac app and try the hotkey on whatever you're writing right now. Auto will pick a sensible engine automatically, or choose your own from Apple Speech, On-Device Pro, and Grafite Cloud Pro in Settings.