100% on-device · nothing uploaded, ever

Dictation that speaks Filipino — and never leaves your Mac.

Press a key, talk, and clean text lands in any app — English, Tagalog, or Taglish mid-sentence. Everything is transcribed on your Mac: no cloud, no account, no telemetry.

Get notified at launch Launching soon — $29 once · free 14-day trial

Apple Silicon · macOS 14+

Receipts

It actually types Taglish.

Say the sentence the way you'd actually say it — half English, half Tagalog — and this is what lands. Three real dictations, shown unedited, misses included.

Said

“Na-approve na ba yung leave request ko for next week?”

Typed — unedited

Na-approve na ba yung leave request ko for next week?

exact — hyphen and question mark included

Said

“Pwede mo ba i-double check yung invoice? Baka may mali sa total.”

Typed — unedited

Pwede mo ba i-double check yung invoice? Baka may mali sa total.

exact — “i-double check” intact

Said

“Send mo na lang sa akin yung report bago mag-lunch, please.”

Typed — unedited

Send mo na lang sa akin yung report bago mag-launch please.

one slip — “mag-lunch” came out “mag-launch” (comma dropped too)

Real, unedited results from the developer's own testing — one voice, one mic, his own Mac. Not a benchmark. Transcribed fully on-device, so his voice never left his Mac; neither will yours.

“Bulong” is Tagalog for whisper. It's built by a Filipino developer who code-switches all day — Taglish was never an afterthought.

Privacy

Private by architecture, not by promise.

No cloud

Transcription runs on-device with NVIDIA Parakeet and Whisper.

No account

No sign-up, no email, no license server.

No telemetry

The app makes exactly one kind of network request: downloading a speech model, once.

After the one-time model download, turn off your Wi-Fi and dictate — it still works. That's the whole point.

See exactly what's handled →
How it works

Three keys and your voice.

  1. Press your hotkey

    ⌃⌥Space out of the box — remap it to anything.

  2. Speak naturally

    Hold to talk, or toggle — in English, Tagalog, or both in one sentence.

  3. The text appears where your cursor is

    Bulong types the result into whatever app is focused.

See it

Designed to disappear.

The whole app is a menu-bar icon, a dictation bar, and a window for your history.

Bulong's History window listing recent transcripts with a search field, word count, and Export and Clear buttons.
History — every transcript, searchable and exportable.
Bulong's menu-bar popover with a Start dictation button, the ⌃⌥Space hotkey, and the last transcript.
The menu-bar popover — start dictation, copy the last result.
Bulong's Settings: language, dictation mode, hotkey, dictation-bar position, downloadable models, and permissions.
Settings — models, hotkey, and permissions, all in one place.
Features

Everything you need, nothing you don't.

On-device Parakeet + Whisper

Two speech models run locally. Nothing is sent to a server.

Works in every app

Any text field — Slack, Mail, your editor, a browser.

Push-to-talk or toggle

Hold the key while you speak, or tap to start and stop.

Custom hotkey

⌃⌥Space by default. Remap it to whatever fits your hands.

Local, searchable history

Every transcript saved to a plaintext file you can search and export.

10 languages incl. Filipino

Dictate in 10 languages — Filipino included, code-switching and all.

Translate to English

Speak another language and get English text, via Whisper.

Your clipboard is preserved

Bulong pastes without clobbering what you already copied.

Compared

Why on-device wins.

Bulong Typical cloud dictation app Apple's built-in
Where your audio goes This Mac Their servers This Mac
Price One-time Monthly Free
Account required No Yes No
Works offline Yes No Yes
Filipino (Tagalog) & Taglish Yes, on-device Varies Varies
Remappable hotkey & push-to-talk Yes Varies No
History you can read and export Plaintext file Their database None

Apple has announced improved macOS dictation — launching English-only.

Pricing

One price. No subscription, ever.

Launching soon

$29once

  • One Mac
  • 14-day full free trial
  • Free updates throughout 1.x
Get notified at launch

No account. No recurring charge. One email when it ships — nothing else.

FAQ

Questions.

Is it really offline?

Yes. Once the speech model has downloaded, Bulong needs no network at all. Turn off your Wi-Fi and it still transcribes.

How good is the Taglish, really?

Good enough to publish the raw results. In the developer's own testing — one voice, one mic, real work sentences — heavy code-switching came out at roughly 95% word accuracy, misses included. The unedited dictations are further up this page. Set the language to Filipino, speak the way you actually speak, and expect a sentence to land in about 6–8 seconds once the model is loaded — the first dictation after launch takes longer while the model warms up.

Which Macs does it run on?

Any Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) running macOS 14 or newer.

Do I need to install anything else?

No. The speech models download inside the app the first time you use them — no command line, no extra packages.

How big is the download?

The app itself is small. The English model is about 600 MB, downloaded once and kept on your Mac.

Can I use it in Slack, VS Code, anywhere?

Any app with a text field. Bulong types the result into whatever window is focused.

How do updates work?

Free updates throughout the 1.x series are included in the price.

Why “Bulong”?

It's Tagalog for “whisper.” Bulong is built by a Filipino developer who dictates in Taglish every day — the name and the language support come from the same place.

Try it in Taglish. Then turn off your Wi-Fi.

Get notified at launch $29 once

Apple Silicon · macOS 14+ · launching soon