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Privacy Notice

Last updated: July 16, 2026

Parrot is a native macOS command-line tool that converts one spoken utterance into text. This notice describes what Parrot itself processes and how its use of Apple's Speech framework may affect privacy.

Audio and transcripts

Parrot accesses the default microphone only while a command that captures audio is running. It streams microphone buffers directly to Apple's Speech framework for recognition.

Parrot does not intentionally:

  • Save microphone audio
  • Create temporary audio files
  • Store completed or partial transcripts
  • Maintain a transcript history
  • Send audio or transcripts to a Parrot-operated server

Recognized text is held in memory while the command runs. A successful command writes one finalized transcript to stdout and exits. With --verbose, partial recognition is also written to stderr.

Your shell and the programs you invoke determine what happens to that output. For example, piping to pbcopy, appending to a file, using command substitution, or passing text to another program may copy or retain the transcript outside Parrot. Terminal applications may also retain displayed output in scrollback.

Apple Speech processing

Parrot uses Apple's SFSpeechRecognizer. Without --on-device, or when on-device = false in configuration, Apple may use network-backed speech recognition depending on the selected locale, macOS capabilities, and system configuration.

With --on-device, or on-device = true, Parrot requires Apple to report on-device recognition support. If strict on-device recognition is unavailable, Parrot exits with an error rather than silently falling back to network-backed recognition.

Apple's handling of data processed by its Speech framework is governed by Apple's terms, system settings, and privacy policies. Parrot does not control Apple's services or data practices.

Permissions

macOS controls Parrot's access to:

  • Microphone
  • Speech Recognition

You can review or revoke these permissions under System Settings > Privacy & Security. Parrot's stable bundle identifier is dev.lobot.parrot.

Configuration

Parrot may read preferences from $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/parrot/config or ~/.config/parrot/config. Supported preferences contain operational settings such as locale, timeout, silence duration, on-device mode, and verbosity. Parrot does not write this file automatically, and it is not intended to contain audio or transcripts.

Telemetry and networking

Parrot itself includes no telemetry, analytics, advertising, user accounts, or Parrot-operated network API. It does not make direct network requests. Network activity may still occur inside Apple's Speech framework when strict on-device recognition is not enabled.

Data retention

Because Parrot does not intentionally persist audio or transcripts, it has no Parrot-managed retention period or deletion process. Data written to a terminal, clipboard, file, log, or downstream command is controlled by those tools and by the user.

Changes and questions

Material changes to Parrot's audio handling, network behavior, telemetry, storage, or third-party processing should be reflected in this notice.

Questions or concerns may be reported through the project's GitHub issue tracker: https://github.com/swinton/parrot/issues.