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General

Yes. Core transcription is free forever: local and cloud models, AI enhancement with your own API key, custom shortcuts, history, and custom AI instructions for dictation. Some features have caps on the free plan, which Pro removes. See the full breakdown on the Pricing page.
There are two: Free, which is what you get without a licence, and Pro, which an activated licence key unlocks. Where the two differ:Other Free plan caps: 10 saved meeting notes, 3 memory items, 1 tone, 1 custom text expansion.Your current plan is shown in Settings > Account, and as a badge at the top of the sidebar.
Only if you choose a cloud transcription model. With local models (Whisper, Parakeet, Nemotron) transcription happens entirely on your machine with no network call. With a cloud model, audio goes directly from your machine to the provider you configured, using your own API key. Vowen does not proxy or store it.That is not the whole picture though. Vowen also sends product analytics, checks for updates, and fetches a model catalog, and several optional features send data to third parties. Privacy and data lays all of it out.
Not currently. Vowen sends product usage events to PostHog, and those events include your name and email if you have set them. There is no setting to disable it.The mitigations available today are to leave the email field blank in Settings > Account and to block us.i.posthog.com at your network level. See Privacy and data.
Encrypted on your machine, alongside your Vowen settings. They are not saved as individual Keychain or Credential Manager entries, so searching Keychain Access will not find them. Keys never leave your device except to reach the provider they belong to, and are never sent to Vowen.See Privacy and data.
Vowen uses open-source components internally (Whisper.cpp, Parakeet) but the application itself is not currently open source. Open-sourcing is being considered for the future.
Yes, always. We will never paywall features that are currently free. The Pro plan is for new, advanced capabilities only.
macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Windows (x64). There is no separate ARM64 Windows build; on an ARM64 Windows machine the x64 build runs under emulation. Linux is not currently supported.
Yes, but Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4) is recommended for best performance with local models. Some larger models may be slower on Intel.

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Licence and plans

No. Pro is a one-time payment for a lifetime licence. There is nothing to renew and nothing to cancel.
Three. To move your licence to a fourth machine, deactivate one of the existing three first from Settings > Account.
Deactivate it on the old machine first, then activate on the new one.
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On the old machine

Open Settings > Account and click Deactivate on the plan card. Confirm. That releases the activation slot.
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On the new machine

Open Settings > Account and activate with the same licence key.
Deactivation needs an internet connection and has to reach the licence server. If the old machine is gone, wiped, or permanently offline, it cannot release its own slot. Use the Manage License link in Settings > Account to open the customer portal and free it from there.
Yes. Pro keeps working without an internet connection. There is no offline countdown or grace period to run out.
Deleting history is a Pro feature. On the free plan the delete controls are disabled.The free plan caps how many meeting notes you can save and how many manual file transcriptions you can run, and deleting old ones would otherwise recycle those slots indefinitely. Upgrading to Pro removes both the caps and the restriction.

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Permissions

Fully quit Vowen (right-click the menu bar or tray icon > Quit Vowen) and relaunch it. macOS in particular requires a full restart after granting Accessibility permission before the change takes effect.
Launch Vowen at least once. The app registers itself with macOS on first launch. If it still doesn’t appear, try dragging the Vowen app from Applications directly into the permission list in System Settings.
Go to System Settings > Privacy & Security > [Permission Type], find Vowen, and toggle it on. If the toggle is greyed out, click the lock icon at the bottom of the window and authenticate to make changes.
On macOS: Microphone and Accessibility are required. Screen Recording is optional and only needed for Meeting Notes, Command Mode screenshots, and region capture. Automation is optional and only needed for per-app tones.Vowen does not use Input Monitoring, so it will not appear in that list and you do not need to add it.On Windows, no manual grants are needed. See Permissions.
Settings > Permissions shows live status for each one with a button that opens the right pane of System Settings. This section is excluded from the settings search box, since these are system grants rather than settings. Click Permissions in the settings sidebar to reach it.

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Updates

Check your internet connection. If you are behind a VPN or firewall, try disabling it temporarily. Some regions may have slower connections to our update server.
Manually quit Vowen (right-click the menu bar or tray icon and choose Quit) and relaunch from Applications or the Start menu.
Every 6 hours. The check runs in the app window, so it does not happen while Vowen is closed. Dismissing an update banner hides it for 24 hours.
Use Settings > General > Check for Updates to force a check. The automatic 6-hour check can be delayed if your machine was offline or asleep.

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Transcription

Vowen defaults to Parakeet V2 on both macOS and Windows, which is a good place to stay unless you have a specific reason to move. Beyond that:
  • Speed, offline: Parakeet V2 (English) or V3 (25 European languages)
  • Speed, cloud: a Groq model
  • Accuracy: Whisper Large v3 Turbo, or Groq Whisper Large v3
  • Languages beyond 25: Whisper Large v3 or a cloud model
  • Privacy: any local model (Whisper, Parakeet, or Nemotron)
  • Real-time preview: a streaming-capable model such as Parakeet, Deepgram, Soniox, or Mistral
See the full Models Guide for detailed comparisons.
Local models run entirely on your device. They work offline and keep your data private, but may be slower on some hardware.Cloud models send your audio to a third-party API (Groq, Deepgram, etc.) for transcription. They’re faster and more accurate for complex vocabulary, but require an internet connection and an API key.
Groq serves two purposes in Vowen:
  1. Transcription: Whisper Large v3 and Whisper Large v3 Turbo convert speech to text. Configured under Speech models
  2. AI Enhancement: a chat model polishes and formats the transcribed text. Configured under Configure your AI
They are different model types serving different stages of the pipeline, and they use the same API key.
Vowen supports 99 languages via Whisper models and 25 European languages via Parakeet V3. Set your dictation language in Settings > Language. For best non-English results, use the multilingual Large v3 model or a cloud model.Vowen’s own interface is also translated into 18 languages. Pick one under Settings > Language > Interface language.
Yes. Open Transcribe in the sidebar to drag and drop or browse for audio and video files. Common formats are supported, with timestamps in the output. The Free plan includes 10 manual file transcriptions in total; Pro has no cap.

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Models

Check your internet connection and available disk space. Downloads can be resumed if interrupted; just click download again.
The model file may be corrupted. Delete the model and re-download it. If the issue persists, check that your antivirus hasn’t quarantined the model files.
The first transcription after launching Vowen (or switching models) takes longer as the model loads into memory. Subsequent transcriptions are faster.

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Accuracy

Whisper sometimes hallucinates “Thank you.” when it detects silence. Vowen’s junk detection catches and discards it in most cases. If it persists, speak immediately when you press the shortcut.
Pause for a brief moment (half a second) after pressing the shortcut before speaking, and after finishing before releasing. This gives the audio capture time to start and stop cleanly.
Slow down slightly, or switch to a larger model. Cloud models (Groq, Deepgram) handle fast speech better than smaller local models.
Add them to your custom vocabulary on the Dictionary page in the sidebar. For consistent misspellings, create a Thread replacement rule on the same page.
This occasionally happens with local models. Re-record the phrase. If it happens frequently, try a different model or enable AI Enhancement, which catches and removes repetitions.

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AI & Enhancement

Yes. Vowen supports 10+ AI providers including OpenAI, Anthropic (Claude), Google Gemini, Groq, DeepSeek, OpenRouter, and more. Bring your own key. No Vowen subscription is required for AI enhancement.
It lightly cleans up your transcription: fixes spelling and grammar, removes filler words (um, uh), applies formatting (bullet points, paragraphs), and converts spoken numbers to digits. It preserves your voice and wording. It does not rewrite your text.
Yes. Many developers use Vowen to dictate prompts to AI coding tools. For code-related dictation, we recommend disabling AI Enhancement so you get the literal transcription without any cleanup.
Yes. Use Command Mode (default: Alt+Shift). When you have text selected, it automatically becomes context for your voice command. Say things like “rewrite this more formally” or “fix the grammar” and the AI will process your selected text.

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Features

Press the hands-free shortcut again to toggle it off, or press the stop button in the recording indicator. Pressing Escape cancels the recording outright and discards it.
Press Escape. That is the default cancel shortcut, and you can change it in Settings > Shortcuts.
Vowen works globally, but you can set up Tones to change behavior per app. For example: formal writing in email apps, casual in chat apps, no AI enhancement in code editors. The free plan includes one tone; Pro removes the limit.
On macOS, per-app tones need the Automation permission so Vowen can tell which app is in front. If tones stop matching for no visible reason, check System Settings > Privacy & Security > Automation. See Permissions.
Locally on your device:
  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/vowen/
  • Windows: %APPDATA%\vowen\
That folder holds your history, your meeting notes and your downloaded models. Saved audio goes to ~/Documents/Vowen Recordings instead, outside it.Privacy and data has the full picture.
Yes. Vowen’s Meeting Notes captures system audio silently. No bot joins the call and no banner appears to other participants. Works with Zoom, Teams, Meet, Slack Huddles, and any app that produces audio. Available on both macOS and Windows. The free plan lets you keep 10 saved notes.
Go to Settings > Account and use the Export Data button on the Data card at the bottom. Import Data is beside it. Import and export are Pro features.
Yes. Rank your Bluetooth device in Settings > Audio. Vowen keeps an ordered list of microphones and uses the highest-ranked one that is currently connected, so a headset can take priority automatically when you put it on. On macOS, if your Bluetooth headset is connected, Meeting Notes captures both system audio and your microphone through it.
Yes. Install the vowen command line tool from Settings > Developer. The same section has Update and Uninstall buttons. See the CLI documentation.
Try Settings > Developer > Prefer IPv4 Connections. It is on by default and resolves cloud services over IPv4 first, which works around networks that advertise broken IPv6. If you are on an IPv6-only network, turn it off. The change applies immediately.

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macOS

macOS sometimes stops sending key presses to apps after sleep. Vowen auto-recovers in most cases, but if it doesn’t, fully quit and relaunch.
Restart Vowen after granting Accessibility permission. The Fn key is only picked up once Vowen has been relaunched.
On first launch after enabling this setting, the Dock icon may briefly appear. It will be hidden on subsequent launches.

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Windows-Specific

The app is not yet code-signed with an Extended Validation (EV) certificate, which is expensive for indie developers. The app is safe to use. You can whitelist it in your antivirus settings.
Some apps don’t support standard Ctrl+V paste. Switch to Direct insertion in Settings > General > Text Insertion Method.
The paste method puts your transcription on the clipboard for a moment, and clipboard managers pick it up. Vowen keeps them out by default. If yours is still recording them, check that Settings > Developer > Allow Dictations in Clipboard History is off. Turn it on if you actually want dictations kept there.
With dual monitors, the indicator may appear on the wrong screen. Restart Vowen and it recalculates position. This has been improved in recent versions.
Some antivirus software quarantines Whisper model files. Add the Vowen data directory (%APPDATA%/vowen/) to your antivirus exclusion list, then re-download the model.
Right-click the icon in the system tray (hidden icons) and select Open Settings. Direct taskbar clicks opening the app window is a known UX issue being addressed.
The Option key on macOS corresponds to the Alt key on Windows. So “Option+Shift” becomes “Alt+Shift” on Windows.
Three options:
  1. Use a cloud model: Groq offers a generous free tier and is very fast
  2. Enable GPU acceleration: if you have an NVIDIA GPU, download the acceleration module from the Speech models page in the sidebar
  3. Use a smaller model: Tiny or Base are faster than Medium and Large