Every dictation is written to a local database so you can review, re-copy, and re-run past results. It never syncs and never leaves the machine — the History page carries a "Local only" badge for exactly this reason.
What is kept
- The raw transcript, as the speech model heard it
- The refined text, after the refinement model rewrote it
- Timing and status metadata
- A compressed copy of the audio — Opus in an Ogg container, 16 kHz mono
Keep audio setting you may have seen belongs to the Meetings feature and does not govern dictation.)Setting a retention window
Retention is by age, not by item count. The options are: no limit, one day, one week, one month, three months, six months, and one year. The default is no limit — meaning history accumulates forever until you change it.
Deleting history
- One entry — delete it from the History page. The matching audio file is deleted with it.
- Everything — Settings → General → Clear history now. You will be asked to type a confirmation phrase, because this is not undoable.
There is no option to disable history recording altogether. The closest equivalent is a one-day retention window plus periodic clearing.
One exception worth knowing
History itself never uploads. But if you dictate using a cloud speech model, that recording is sent to the provider as part of transcription — that is the transcription request, not history sync. Long recordings that fail to upload are queued and retried, and the history row shows that state.