Tota is a Mac dictation app that transcribes investigation notes, one-to-one records and HR correspondence on the Mac itself, so employee grievances, health details and performance notes are never sent to a cloud service.
A grievance meeting has just finished. The notes need to be accurate, contemporaneous and written before the next meeting, and they concern a named employee's health, conduct or complaint. A cloud dictation app would send that audio to a vendor. Tota transcribes it on your Mac and types the note into Workday, BambooHR, Word or wherever your cursor is, with nothing leaving the machine.
Why employee data is the wrong thing to send to a dictation vendor
HR writes the most legally sensitive notes in the company: grievance and disciplinary records, absence and medical details, performance concerns, redundancy consultations and references. Employees have a right to see much of it, and regulators expect it to be handled carefully. Cloud dictation apps send the audio containing all of it to their own servers and often to a third-party AI provider.
The usual response is to add the vendor to the register of processors, sign a data-processing agreement and hope nobody asks about sub-processors. On-device dictation is simpler: the audio and text never leave the HR adviser's Mac, so there is no processor, no transfer and nothing for a subject-access request to turn up at a vendor.
Tota is that kind of app. Speech recognition and formatting run locally using OpenAI's Whisper and a small local language model, nothing is uploaded, and there is no account.
What HR teams actually dictate
- Investigation and hearing notes. Contemporaneous records written immediately after a meeting, often long and detailed.
- One-to-one and performance notes. Short entries after each conversation, typed into the HR system's notes field.
- Outcome letters and references. Formal correspondence dictated into Word or Outlook and edited on screen.
- Policy and handbook drafts. Long documents where talking through a first draft is faster than typing.
- Case summaries for legal or leadership. Structured notes where Smart Formatting's paragraphing helps.
What leaves your Mac, and what doesn't
This is the whole list. Every row is checkable from the app's own behaviour, and the security page explains how to watch its network activity yourself.
| Data | Leaves your Mac? | What actually happens |
|---|---|---|
| Your voice while dictating employee records | No | Recorded to a temporary file, transcribed on your Mac by Whisper via WhisperKit, then deleted. |
| The transcript | No | Typed into the app you are using. Kept in a local history for three days, then archived as Markdown in a folder you choose. Entries can be deleted. |
| Text on your screen | No | With “Spell what’s on your screen” on, the visible text of the window you are dictating into is read once, to bias spelling. Never stored or sent. Can be turned off. |
| Glossary terms and learned corrections | No | Stored as JSON files in Tota’s folder in Application Support. |
| Smart Formatting | No | Runs a local Qwen 3 language model via MLX. Off by default. |
| Audio files dropped in for transcription | No | Transcribed and speaker-labelled on your Mac. |
| Licence key and a machine identifier | Yes | Sent to api.lemonsqueezy.com at activation and validation. Never any content. |
| Update check | Yes | A download request to github.com at launch. Can be disabled in Settings. |
| Model downloads | Yes, one-way | Speech, formatting and speaker-ID model files from huggingface.co, once, on first use. |
| Usage analytics or crash reports | Never | There is no analytics or crash-reporting SDK in the app. |
How Tota works for HR and people teams
Install the app, grant it microphone and accessibility access, and press Cmd+Shift+R wherever your cursor is. Tota records until you press it again, transcribes the audio on your Mac with OpenAI's Whisper model running through WhisperKit, and types the result into the field. There is also a hold-to-talk key for short entries and a “Hey Tota” wake word for hands-free use. It behaves like a keyboard, so it works in browser-based systems, Word, email, Notes and anything else with a text field, with no integration to request from IT. After the one-time model download it needs no internet at all.
Three optional layers sit on top. Smart Formatting runs a small local language model that fixes punctuation, turns “new paragraph” and “new list” into structure, and corrects stutters without rewriting what you meant. The auto-learning dictionary remembers the corrections you make. And Audio Drop transcribes audio files you already have, with automatic speaker labels, also on-device.
Workflows for a people team
- The contemporaneous note. Straight after the meeting, cursor in the case file, shortcut, speak. Say 'new paragraph' between topics. The audio is deleted once transcribed.
- Notes into the HR system. Tota types into browser-based systems like Workday, BambooHR and Personio as if it were a keyboard. No integration to request from IT.
- The outcome letter. Dictate the substance into your template, then edit tone and wording on screen. Filler words are removed automatically.
- Meeting recordings, with consent. Where the employee has agreed to a recording, Audio Drop transcribes the file on-device with speaker labels, so the record is verbatim without a transcription vendor.
A glossary for HR and people teams
HR vocabulary is a mix of employment-law terms, internal acronyms and people's names. A Tota glossary is a short list of terms the speech model is nudged towards while it transcribes, with sound-alike matching afterwards for anything it still mishears. A glossary for a UK people team might hold:
- employee and manager names
- ACAS
- TUPE
- PIP
- capability
- grievance
- redundancy consultation
- safeguarding
- occupational health
- internal team and system names
The built-in Names glossary is a starting point for people's names. Keep lists to the terms that get misheard; the live hint has room for roughly 70 to 90 words. Tota can switch glossary by app, so the list for Slack can differ from the one for the HR system.
Tota ships with a built-in Names starter glossary you can edit, and the glossaries guide covers set-up, the hint budget and per-app switching.
What Tota does not do
- It is not an HR information system. Tota types where the cursor is. Retention, access control and subject-access handling remain with the system you dictate into.
- It does not record meetings. Recording an employee meeting needs consent and a policy. Tota transcribes your own dictation, or a recording you already have, on the Mac.
- It has no compliance certification. There is no Tota server that handles employee data, so there is no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 scope and no data-processing agreement. The notes are files on the adviser's Mac under your device policy.
- Transcripts are files on your Mac. Nothing is synced or backed up by Tota. FileVault, your backup tool and your device policy are what protect them.
Pricing for a people team
Tota is a one-time purchase of £19.99, with two seats per licence, after a 14-day free trial of every feature. There is no subscription, no per-minute transcription fee and no word limit, because local processing costs us nothing per word. Larger teams buy additional licences. Pricing is the same worldwide; see the pricing section for what the licence includes.
Frequently asked questions
Does employee information leave the Mac when I dictate?
No. Audio is transcribed on the Mac by OpenAI's Whisper via WhisperKit, deleted once transcribed, and the text is typed into the app you are using. Tota's only network calls are a licence check, an update check and one-time model downloads, none carrying content.
Do we need to add Tota to our register of data processors?
Tota does not process employee data on your behalf; nothing is sent to it. That is a question for your data-protection lead, but the security page enumerates every network call the app makes so they can check.
Does it work with Workday, BambooHR, Personio and Google Docs?
Yes, with any normal text field, including in a browser. Tota is system-wide dictation and needs no integration.
Can two advisers share a licence?
Each licence includes two seats, so two Macs can be activated. Larger teams buy additional licences; there is no per-month per-user fee.
Where are transcripts stored?
In a local history on the Mac for three days, then archived as Markdown files in a folder you choose. Entries can be deleted at any time and nothing is synced anywhere by Tota.
What does it cost?
£19.99 once, after a 14-day free trial, with two seats per licence. No subscription and no word limit.
Write the contemporaneous note on the Mac that heard it
Download Tota and dictate the next case note without adding a processor to the register. Two seats, £19.99 once.
14-day free trial · macOS 14 or later · No account needed
