Frequently asked questions

Cluinn is a Mac app for dictation and for your calls. Dictation turns your speech into cleaned-up text and types it wherever your cursor is, in any app or text field. For calls it’s a call assistant: it writes a live transcript, answers questions while the call runs and saves the transcript on your Mac so you can ask about it later. Start with your first dictation or What Calls does.

Any Apple silicon Mac (M1 or later) running macOS 12 Monterey or later. Intel Macs aren’t supported. See Install Cluinn.

No. Sign in, choose a plan and it works: transcription and the AI are handled for you, with nothing to set up.

Partly. Cluinn transcribes on your own Mac wherever it can: on a recent Apple silicon Mac with an active plan, your speech becomes text on the machine itself, with no external speech model and no audio uploaded. During a trial, or any time Cluinn can’t run the on-device model, the audio is sent to our servers to be turned into text and discarded straight after. So on a Mac that qualifies, dictation keeps working offline, with your words as transcribed; the clean-up from your persona needs a connection. Answers about calls always need one, and Cluinn needs you signed in. Your recordings and transcripts stay on your Mac either way.

35 languages (39 options, counting regional variants), plus an Auto setting that detects the language as you speak. Pick one in Settings → Dictation → Dictation language. Details in Languages & translation.

Yes, once you finish speaking. Smart translation types your words in the language of the app or website you’re writing in: speak Spanish into an English email thread and, when you stop, it’s typed in English. It isn’t simultaneous interpretation. It’s off until you turn it on for a persona. How to turn it on, and how it decides, is in Languages & translation.

Typing into other apps needs the Accessibility permission; you can check it in Settings → Privacy. Your text is also copied to the clipboard, so you can paste it with ⌘V while you sort that out. See Permissions.

Yes. Add it to the Dictionary (names, products, jargon) and switch on Enable Dictionary, and dictation spells it your way from then on.

There’s a monthly allowance, set far above everyday use, with a ceiling on how much can fall on any single day. A single dictation also has a maximum length; if you talk past it, everything up to that point is still transcribed. Hours renew on the 1st, and you won’t see anything about them until you’ve used 80% of a month’s hours. The figures in force are in the fair-use section of our Terms; where you stand is in Usage.

Never. Nothing joins your call and nothing announces itself: Cluinn listens on your Mac, through your microphone and system audio. If you share your screen, keep the Calls panel on a display you aren’t sharing; see Using the Calls panel.

All of them, because it captures audio on your Mac rather than plugging into the meeting service. Cluinn also watches for calls in 8 apps (Zoom, Google Meet, Webex, GoTo Meeting, Whereby, Slack huddles, Discord and Microsoft Teams in the browser) and opens the Calls bar when one starts, so you can press Start. The Teams desktop app is the one it can miss; start those calls yourself with ⌘\. More in What Calls does.

Not from Cluinn: nothing joins the call or announces itself. Tell people you’re transcribing before you start. Recording rules differ by region, and some places need everyone on the call to agree; see the Terms.

Not on Cluinn’s servers. Audio is transcribed and discarded; a clip that hasn’t been transcribed yet waits in your own folder on your Mac until it goes through, then it’s deleted. Only text is kept: on your Mac and, where encrypted backup is switched on for your account, in your encrypted backup.

On every plan you can view, copy and download the transcript. Downloading an AI answer as a PDF is part of Pro, and the free trial includes it. If your plan ends, the app shows Your plan has ended until you choose a plan again; your recordings stay on your Mac. See Saved calls & chat.

A page in the sidebar that helps you get better at calls. You set a goal, such as “End every call with a dated next step”, and Coach reads each saved call against it: the moments that slipped, the ones that went well and a line to try next time. It’s part of Pro. See Coach.

Yes, set far above normal use: a monthly pool of hours, a maximum length for any single call and a ceiling on questions per saved call. Hours renew on the 1st, and nothing you’ve already recorded is ever taken away. The figures in force are in the fair-use section of our Terms; see also Plans & trials.

Basic covers dictation; Pro adds all of Calls: the call assistant during a call, chat about saved calls, Coach and PDF downloads of answers.

On each plan card you can start the free trial or choose Subscribe now. Starting a trial takes your card but charges nothing that day; Subscribe now charges straight away. The trial gives you all Pro features, whichever plan you chose, with a fixed pool of Calls and dictation hours for the whole trial. The trial’s length and hours are set in our Terms. If a trial isn’t offered on your account, the card shows Subscribe now on its own.

When the trial ends, the plan you picked starts and your card is charged the amount shown at checkout. We email you twice beforehand and show a banner in the app for the last three days, all naming the exact amount and date. If you cancel before the trial ends, you aren’t charged. Encrypted backup doesn’t run during the trial. Its Backup tab appears once your plan starts, and where encrypted backup is switched on for your account, everything from the trial is backed up then.

Cancelling during a trial ends it straight away rather than at the end of the trial, and the app says so before you confirm. There’s one trial per person.

Yes, with two exceptions. Upgrading takes effect straight away and starts a new billing period: you’re charged the new plan’s price, less a credit for the unused time on your old plan. Downgrading takes effect at your next renewal, so you keep everything you’ve already paid for until then.

The first is a free trial: your plan can change once the trial ends. To switch sooner, cancel the trial and subscribe to the plan you want; the trial doesn’t carry over.

The second is annual. While an annual plan is running, you can upgrade or move to another annual plan, but you can’t step down to a monthly one before the year is up: the card is greyed out, and the app tells you monthly plans become available when the year ends. To stop an annual plan renewing, cancel from Manage billing; you keep access to the end of the year you paid for.

Through Stripe. Choose a plan, in the app or on our website, and you’ll go to a checkout page hosted by Stripe; we never see or store your card details. Checkout adds sales tax where we’re registered to collect it, and Subscribe now accepts promo codes (a trial checkout doesn’t).

Payments are non-refundable, including for unused time in a billing period, except where a refund is required by law. Because cancelling always leaves you with access until the end of the period you’ve paid for, you never lose time you’ve bought. If you think you were charged in error, email support@cluinn.com within 30 days and we’ll make it right. Full details are in the refund policy.

In the app, click the account chip at the bottom of the sidebar, open Plan and use Manage billing or Change plan. You can also manage everything from your account on this website.

Click the account chip at the bottom of the sidebar. The menu has Deleted calls (if you use Calls), then Plan, Usage and Settings; Settings comes last because the menu opens upward, so it’s nearest your pointer. Your photo, name and email are on the Account tab in Settings, your password is on the Security tab and your activity is on Usage, which opens a sheet of its own.

Sign out isn’t in that menu: it’s a button in Settings → Account, so a stray click can’t end your session. See Account & billing.

Settings → Account → Delete account…, then type your account email to confirm. Your recordings, calls and notes on that Mac are erased straight away and can’t be recovered, anything in your encrypted backup is scheduled for deletion, your subscription ends at once and the account itself is deleted after about 30 days. If you only want to stop paying, cancel through Manage billing instead.

Look in the macOS menu bar: Cluinn → About Cluinn.

On your Mac, in a folder that belongs to your account. Your audio is never stored on our servers and never backed up. Where encrypted backup is switched on for your account, an encrypted copy of your calls, dictation transcripts, notes and folders is kept on our servers. See Privacy settings.

Not continuously. Nothing from your screen is stored, and nothing is read unless a feature needs it right then. The Screen Recording permission (called Screen & System Audio Recording on macOS 15 and later) is used for five things: noticing that a meeting has started, capturing the other side’s call audio, reading the meeting window to put names on the transcript, a language check once per recording for Smart translation and Visual awareness. Visual awareness sends one picture with each question you ask, and only while it’s on (the screen icon beside the ask box in the Calls panel).

For speaker names, only the meeting window is read, never your whole screen, and some of that reading happens on your Mac. Pictures of that one window are also read on our servers while a call runs: about every 20 seconds while people are still joining, dropping to every few minutes once the list of names settles, plus one when a new voice starts. Smart translation’s language check sends our servers one picture of the window you’re typing into, once per recording. Visual awareness is the one exception to the single window: while it’s on, each question you ask includes a picture of the screen your meeting is on (for a call in a browser tab, only that tab’s window). None of these pictures is stored.

Your hotkeys, paste setting, dictation language, sound settings, personas, snippets and dictionary follow your account to any Mac you sign in to. Anything about one particular Mac stays there: theme, recorder position, the Dock and menu-bar icons, the microphone you chose and the two clean-up schedules.

Calls, transcripts and notes don’t sync this way. Where encrypted backup is switched on for your account, they reach another Mac through it. Details in Sync & backup.