# Kayit: On-device Voice to Text — Support & Help Kayit runs entirely on your own Mac, iPhone or iPad, so most questions are about getting set up and getting the most out of it. Browse the FAQ below, or send us a message from the contact form at and we'll get back to you. ## Frequently asked questions ### Does Kayit send my audio or transcripts to the cloud? No. Kayit transcribes entirely on your Mac using on-device machine learning, and never uploads your audio, transcripts or quotes to any server, account or third-party API. There is no Kayit server for them to go to. Your files stay where you put them on your Mac unless you export, share or email them yourself. ### Do I need an account or sign-in to use Kayit? No. Kayit requires no account and no sign-in. There is nothing to log into and no personal information to provide. ### What do I need to run Kayit? Kayit runs on a Mac with Apple chip (M1 or later) running macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later, on an iPhone running iOS 26 or later, and on an iPad running iPadOS 26 or later, where 8 GB of memory or more is what the larger models need. An internet connection is needed the first time you transcribe, to download the on-device models, and after that only if you subscribe to Pro, so the App Store can confirm it. Transcription itself never needs one, on any of them. ### How long can Kayit work without an internet connection? Indefinitely for everything in the free tier. Transcription, playback, editing, search and text export never ask the App Store anything, so nothing there expires while you are offline. Pro features keep working for two weeks after the last time the App Store confirmed your subscription, which covers a reporting trip without a signal. Settings has an Offline screen that downloads your models ahead of one. ### Why does Kayit need the internet on first launch? Kayit downloads each machine-learning model the first time it needs it. A transcription model, which is 500 MB for Parakeet and between 600 MB and 950 MB for Whisper depending on which build suits your Mac; pick Apple's built-in engine instead and macOS installs its own language pack for the language you chose. That one is all the free tier ever fetches. With Kayit Pro there are two more: a small speaker-separation model, the first time Kayit separates speakers, and a language model sized to your Mac, roughly 1 to 4.3 GB, the first time you use the optional AI Insights. Kayit's own models come from Apple's content delivery network as Background Assets packs, falling back to Hugging Face, the model-hosting service they are published on. Each is model data, not your audio, and downloads only once; after that Kayit transcribes offline. If you know you will be working without a connection, Settings has a screen that fetches everything ahead of time. ### Does Kayit identify who is speaking? Yes, with a Kayit Pro subscription. Speaker separation runs automatically on-device, splitting the transcript each time the speaker changes and labeling them "Speaker 1", "Speaker 2" and so on. You can rename each speaker, and the renaming applies across the whole transcript. Save a sample of your own voice once and Kayit labels your turns automatically in later interviews. The free tier transcribes the same audio into the same words, without the labels. ### Does the transcript stay in sync with the audio? Audio and text stay aligned at the word level. As you play a recording the transcript follows along, highlighting each word as it is spoken, and you can click any word to jump playback straight to that moment. A scrubbable waveform lets you move through the recording while the text tracks with it. ### How do I create and export quotes in Kayit? Saved quotes are a Kayit Pro feature. Select any passage in the transcript, or tap the quote icon on a line, to save one. Because the text is aligned to the audio, each quote keeps its speaker, timestamp and exact audio span. You can add a note to a quote, name its clip, copy the quote with just the fields you choose, and export the matching audio as an M4A or WAV clip. Quotes you saved during a trial stay in your file and stay readable if the subscription lapses. ### What formats can I export? Plain text is in the free tier, for the whole transcript, with no limit on how much you export. Kayit Pro adds Markdown, CSV, SubRip subtitles (.srt), timestamps alongside the words, quotes copied with the fields you choose, audio clips as M4A or WAV and the interview bundle that carries the audio with the transcript. Kayit writes an open .transcript.json file next to your audio either way, so your work is portable and future-proof. ### How many languages does Kayit support? A hundred, across its three transcription engines. Whisper covers all of them; Parakeet covers 25 European languages; Apple's built-in engine covers its own set of languages with regional variants such as en-GB or es-MX, read live from macOS so the list grows with the operating system. You choose the language first and Kayit shows which engines can handle it, so you never pick an engine that cannot transcribe your recording. ### Can I turn off the AI features? Two settings cover it. One removes the summary and the outline, which are where Kayit writes new sentences. The other removes the line under a flagged passage explaining why it was flagged. With both off, everything left in the Insights panel is quoted from your recording rather than written about it: the newsworthy flagging, the suggested quotes, and the tagging of people, organizations and places. Picking the passages still runs a language model on your Mac, and nothing is uploaded either way. Both settings are standard macOS preferences, so an IT department can force either off across an organization with a managed profile. ### Can Kayit transcribe video files? Yes. Drop or open one and Kayit extracts the audio track and transcribes that. Most common video formats work: if your Mac can play a file, Kayit can almost certainly read it. Your video file is never moved, modified or deleted, and only the audio is copied into your Kayit folder, so a library of interviews does not fill up with video. ### Does Kayit work with Voice Memos recordings? It does, through the macOS Share menu. Voice Memos has no export command and keeps its recordings in a container other apps cannot read, so Kayit installs itself there: select a recording in Voice Memos, choose Share and then Kayit, and it is imported and ready to transcribe. You can also drag a recording straight out of Voice Memos onto the Kayit window. ### Can I send an interview to a colleague? Kayit Pro exports an interview as a single bundle containing the transcript, the audio and the sidecar file. A colleague without Kayit can double-click the transcript and read it; a colleague with Kayit can import the bundle and get the speaker labels, word-level timings and your saved quotes without transcribing the audio again. Uncompressed audio is converted to M4A on the way out, so a two-hour interview is small enough to email. On the free tier you can still send the words, as plain text. ### How is Kayit different from Otter.ai, Descript, Rev or Trint? Most other tools upload your audio to their servers, and their summaries and other AI features read your transcript there as well. Kayit does neither. Transcription and the on-device model that flags admissions, contradictions and on-record claims both run on your Mac, which protects confidential sources and interview material by design. ### Is Kayit GDPR and HIPAA compliant, and do I need a DPA or vendor security review? Kayit never receives your audio or transcripts, and that single fact answers most compliance questions. **GDPR.** Because transcription runs entirely on your Mac, there is no cloud processing, no controller-to-processor relationship with us and no cross-border transfer to account for. Your recordings stay under your sole control, so you decide how they are stored, retained and deleted; if you export or send an interview, that is your own processing activity rather than ours. **HIPAA.** No protected health information reaches us, which avoids the third-party disclosure that would normally require a Business Associate Agreement. You remain responsible for securing your own Mac with disk encryption, access controls and device policies. **DPAs, SOC 2, ISO 27001 and CCPA.** We are not a data processor or sub-processor for your recordings, because there is nothing for us to process on your behalf. The same reasoning covers attorney-client and journalistic confidentiality. ### Where is my data stored, and can anyone at Kayit access it? Everything Kayit produces (audio, transcripts, speaker labels, quotes and the .transcript.json sidecar) is stored only in the locations you choose on your own Mac. No one at Kayit can access it, because Kayit never sends it anywhere. Kayit has no analytics that capture your content, no telemetry of your recordings and no backend account tied to your transcripts. ### What is free in Kayit, and what needs a subscription? Transcription is free and so is everything that turns a recording into text you can read. Kayit Pro adds the tools built on top of those words. **Free.** Transcribing with any of the three on-device engines, in any of the hundred languages. Playback with the transcript following along word by word, search and the library of your interviews. Edit mode, where correcting a word keeps its exact timing. Export of the whole transcript as plain text. There is no time limit, no minute cap and no account. **Kayit Pro.** Speaker separation, re-running it when it reads wrong and the sample of your own voice that names your turns automatically. Saved quotes with their speaker, timestamp and audio, the quotes panel and trimmed audio clips. The on-device insights: summary, outline, newsworthy passages and named people, organizations and places. Projects, which file a story's interviews together: one roster of speaker names across them, every quote saved in them in a single list, and the set exported as a whole. Making a project needs the subscription; the projects you already made stay open without it, and so do filing into them, archiving them and the filter. Markdown, CSV and SubRip subtitle export, timestamps alongside the words, plus any export that carries the audio. ### How much does Kayit cost? Kayit is free to download and free to transcribe with, for as long as you like. Kayit Pro is $6.99 USD per month or $49.99 USD per year, bought through the App Store, and it starts with a 14-day free trial. One purchase covers the Mac, iPhone and iPad apps. There are no per-minute charges, no upload limits, no additional in-app purchases and no ads, on either tier. ### Is there an iPhone or iPad app? Yes, one app covering both, and it is the same purchase as the Mac app rather than a second one. It transcribes with the same three on-device engines, plays back against the transcript, edits, names speakers, saves quotes and exports, with the same free tier and the same Pro features behind it. The iPad draws that as three panes, with the on-device insights beside the transcript; the iPhone has everything except the insights, because the model that writes them needs more memory than a phone has. A saved sample of your voice works on each device but does not yet copy between them. None of them records audio, so you bring recordings made elsewhere: from Voice Memos, from Files or from a recorder. ### What does the name Kayit mean? Kayit is the Turkish word for record. It is the literal term for a recording of audio, and in English it doubles as going on the record, which is what the app is for. ## Troubleshooting quick hits - **Stuck on first use of feature?** Some features need a one-time model download on first use, from 500 MB to a few gigabytes depending on the feature, and a stable internet connection. Keep Kayit open and it will resume; after that, it works offline. There is an option to preload what you need before traveling. - **Transcription seems slow?** The first run also warms up the on-device model. Later transcriptions are faster. Closing other heavy apps frees up the Neural Engine and memory if you only have 8GB of RAM. - **Speakers not separating well?** On the setup screen, set the exact number of speakers instead of Auto-detect for cleaner results, then use the Speakers panel to rename them. - **Want to protect a recording?** Keep your library folder out of iCloud, Dropbox or other syncing folders. Kayit will warn you if it detects one. ## Contact Send a message using the contact form at . We only use what you send to reply to you — see the [Privacy Policy](https://kayit.press/privacy.md). ## More - [Home](https://kayit.press/index.md) - [Privacy Policy](https://kayit.press/privacy.md) - [Terms & Conditions](https://kayit.press/terms.md)