July was the month Local Mode stopped asking you to wait. The on-device model got better twice over, the update that carries it stopped interrupting your work, and you can now buy the whole thing outright instead of subscribing. Actions arrived alongside it, which is the first thing in Epilude that edits text you did not just dictate.
A better model, still on your Mac
Local Mode runs Epilude Model 4.1 now, two generations on from where the month started. Mid-sentence self-corrections resolve the way you meant them. Dates and names survive the pass. A sentence that switches language stays in the languages you spoke. And long dictations, which used to occasionally ramble or repeat themselves, stay tight. On our internal benchmark, Model 4 makes 56 percent fewer critical meaning errors than Model 3, in the same 1.5 GB download, at the same speed. Model 4.1 held that and went after the long-dictation case.
All of it runs on your Mac. In Local Mode your audio never leaves it, which is the reason we keep spending months on a model small enough to fit there, and the reason the mode exists at all for work that should not leave the building, like client files and legal drafting. Full on-device Cleanup needs a 16 GB Mac or larger. Below that, Local Mode transcribes and formats on-device and still never reaches the cloud.
Local Mode stopped interrupting you
A new model used to mean a pause. Dictation stopped until you downloaded it, even when the model already on your Mac was working fine. Now you keep dictating, a dismissible card on Home tells you a newer one is ready, and you take it when it suits you. Settings gained a switcher: see what you are running, update in the background, keep or remove the older model afterwards.
The waiting got shorter in the other direction too. Local Mode stays ready while Epilude is open instead of going cold between dictations, so the first words after a quiet stretch come back as quickly as the rest. If your Mac is genuinely short on memory, Epilude still hands the memory back.
Pay Once, for people who do not want a subscription
Pay Once is a single $59 purchase that unlocks Local Mode: dictation and Cleanup processed on your Mac, where your audio never leaves it. It works offline, with the app checking in occasionally when you are online, and it includes a full year of app updates. Cloud mode, which has the fastest transcription and the largest Cleanup models, still runs on Pro or your free trial. That is the whole split, and it is worth knowing before you weigh Epilude against other Mac dictation apps.
Signing in got easier alongside it. Continue with Google works in the app and on the web dashboard, with no email code to wait for. If you have been signing in with a Gmail address, it lands you in the account you already have.
Actions: say the edit, in any app
Actions works on text that is already on your screen. Highlight a sentence, a paragraph, or a whole draft, press ⌃⌥E, and say the change you want: make this shorter, fix the grammar, translate to Spanish, turn this into bullet points. Epilude rewrites the selection in place and puts your clipboard back the way it was.
Open Actions in the sidebar and Set up Actions walks you through your first edit. It runs through the Epilude cloud, so it needs Cloud mode and a signed-in account. The launch post has the longer walkthrough.
Fewer ways a dictation goes wrong
Your hotkeys behave now. Releasing the key ends the dictation, a long hold keeps recording for as long as you hold it, and dictation stays out of the way of typing in other apps.
The rest of the loop got steadier. Start a new dictation while the last one is still being cleaned up, and the older text used to land in whichever app you had switched to. It goes to your history instead. Cleanup that takes too long inserts your words with basic formatting rather than leaving you waiting. A soft or distant phrase is no longer mistaken for silence and dropped. And a momentary network blip or a busy server no longer costs you a dictation.
Recent dictations opens into a full list, and every entry carries the same actions as the card: copy the text, compare it against the raw transcript, undo or redo Cleanup, or report one that missed. That history stays on your Mac.
Where that leaves July
The through-line was Local Mode: a better model, a way to buy it outright, and a shorter list of moments where it asks you to stop and deal with it. If you have been running Cloud mode out of habit, the switch is one setting away.
