Is Willow Voice safe?

Willow Voice is reasonably safe by the standards of cloud dictation, and its default privacy setting is stricter than its closest rivals. It is not local: your voice is sent to Willow's servers, so "safe" depends on trusting the company's stated terms. Everything below comes from Willow's own pages, read on October 27, 2026, and is a statement of what Willow says, not an audit by us.

Your audio goes to the cloud, then is discarded

Willow says its dictation runs on cloud infrastructure in the United States, with data encrypted in transit and at rest ¹. It explains the choice this way: cloud models are faster and more reliable than what local models can do today ². This is cloud dictation, the opposite of on-device speech recognition.

What happens next is controlled by Privacy Mode, which is on by default. In that mode Willow says:

• it keeps no dictated audio, dictated text or screen content ³;
• it discards the recording after transcription ⁴;
• neither Willow nor its service providers use your audio for model training ⁵.

This is close to zero data retention for individuals. If you turn Privacy Mode off, Willow says limited, anonymized dictation data may be used to improve quality and is never sold ⁶.

The default is stricter than Wispr Flow and Aqua Voice

Wispr Flow's two data switches, model improvement and cloud storage of dictations, are on unless you or your company turn them off ⁷. Aqua Voice may store transcripts unless you turn on its Privacy Mode ⁸. Willow starts with nothing kept, and you opt in to share. That is the main privacy argument for Willow. See Is Wispr Flow safe? for the other side.

Some data still reaches Willow

• Screen text. With Context Awareness on, Willow may temporarily read text in your active window to spell names correctly, and says it does not retain it ⁹. Turn it off if confidential material is often on screen.
• Usage data. Willow records your words-per-minute rate and the number of words you dictate, plus device details ¹⁰.
• Transcript history. It stays on your device only ¹¹, so anyone with access to that computer can read it.

Certifications and HIPAA help, but do not settle the question

Willow says it has completed a SOC 2 Type II examination covering the Security criteria ¹². Individual users can sign a Business Associate Agreement inside the app, and with HIPAA mode on Willow says it stores no voice or transcription content ¹³. These describe the vendor. They do not make your own handling of protected health information compliant.

Offline use is narrow

Willow's security page promises it is "offline when you need it" ¹⁴, but the detail is narrower. Offline dictation is listed as an Individual Pro feature ¹⁵, and Willow's blog places its offline mode on Mac and iOS only ¹⁶. We found nothing saying which languages work offline or whether the AI rewriting step does. On Windows and on the free plan, assume you need an internet connection.

It depends on what you dictate

What to do

1. Open Settings and confirm Privacy Mode is on; check again after updates.
2. Decide whether you need Context Awareness.
3. If audio must never leave the machine, use a local tool. Apple's dictation processes general text on the device ¹⁸, and Yap, which we make, runs on the device for Mac and Windows ( download).

For the full terms see the Willow Voice guide in our overview of dictation software. Related questions: Is Willow Voice free? and Willow Voice vs Wispr Flow.