Privacy Policy

SideWave has no server. Speech recognition and Refine run on your Mac, and your audio and text stay there unless you paste them into another app. This page lists what SideWave stores, when it goes online, and how to delete things.

What stays on your Mac

SideWave keeps its files in ~/Library/Application Support/SideWave/.

  • Dictation audio is processed in memory and never saved. While you dictate, the text so far goes to a recovery file, which is deleted once the text is in History or you discard it.
  • History (history.json) holds each dictation's text, the app it went to, and the earlier recognition and Refine stages. It keeps 7 days by default, up to 500 entries. Settings > Privacy can change that to 1, 3, 7, 14, 30, or 90 days, or Never, which keeps entries until the 500-entry limit. You can delete one entry or all of them.
  • Meeting audio, if you turn on Meetings, is written to Meetings/InProgress/ while you record, in folders only your account can open. It stays until you process or discard it, whatever your history setting. Transcripts and notes go in meeting-history.json.
  • Vocabulary: your glossaries, aliases, usage notes, and speech profile.
  • Documents: the current draft for each template and the documents in Recents, in document_drafts.json.
  • Settings are stored in macOS user defaults.
  • Models: speech models and Gemma stay in local caches. Settings > Refine > Cached Models removes Gemma downloads, and the full reset in Settings > Advanced deletes everything, models included. macOS manages the Apple Intelligence models.

If a data file can't be read, SideWave leaves it in place instead of overwriting it, and the app shows the error. If a save keeps failing, copy anything important before you quit.

When SideWave goes online

  • Model downloads from Hugging Face during setup, and when you pick a model that isn't on the Mac yet.
  • Glossary bundles: opening the catalog fetches its index from GitHub, and installing a bundle downloads that one file. Bundles update only when you ask, unless you turn on daily checks for a bundle. Your own vocabulary is never uploaded.
  • Updates: Sparkle reads the release feed at sidewave.dev and downloads new versions from GitHub. SideWave asks before it checks automatically, and Check for updates automatically in Settings > About changes that later. Sparkle's system profile report is off.
  • Links you click open in your browser.

These hosts see ordinary request details, such as your IP address. SideWave has no analytics and no crash reporting. Help > Data Transparency lists every download and update check with its host, path, size, and time, and never the request body or your text. It covers SideWave's own downloads, not everything on your network.

Refine and other local models

Refine, meeting notes, Describe Your Field, and the speech profile use Apple Intelligence or a Gemma 4 model on your Mac. Once the models are downloaded, all of it works offline. Model output can be wrong, so read it before you send it anywhere.

Other apps

Text you paste into a browser, chat app, or terminal falls under that app's privacy terms. SideWave's owner-only file permissions keep other user accounts out of its files. They don't stop other software running under your own account.

Permissions

SideWave explains each permission before macOS asks for it, and if you deny one, it shows how to turn it back on. You can turn either off in System Settings > Privacy & Security.

  • Microphone: dictation, meetings, and Test Microphone. With Keep microphone on standby turned on, the input stays open between dictations and macOS shows the orange microphone indicator. SideWave throws standby audio away as it arrives; nothing is recorded until you press the shortcut.
  • Accessibility: the global shortcut, finding the window and text field you started in, and pasting.

Source and licenses

SideWave is open source under Apache 2.0, and the code is on GitHub. Dependencies and model weights have their own licenses, listed in Acknowledgments.

Questions

Open an issue on GitHub. Leave out transcripts, credentials, and log files you haven't checked, since issues are public.

Last updated October 16, 2026