Inkrest: Private Dictation
Offline Voice to Text Keyboard
$7.99
Fold it like a laptop and Inkrest stacks up: your words on top, every style and the mic below. Private dictation that runs entirely on your device. No account, no cloud.
Speak however it comes out. Inkrest is private voice to text for iPhone and iPad: it turns your speech into clean, finished writing right on your device, with nothing sent to a server. It works offline after a one-time download.
Most dictation just transcribes. Inkrest goes further: it captures what you say, then quietly refines the "ums," the false starts, and the run-ons into clear, polished prose in the style you choose. Speak a half-formed thought; get back a finished paragraph.
And it all happens on your device. Speech-to-text and the AI rewriting both run locally on Apple silicon. No accounts. No servers. No telemetry. After a one-time model download, Inkrest works with no internet connection at all — on a plane, on a trail, anywhere. Your words never leave your device.
CAPTURE ANYWHERE
- A dictation keyboard for any app: tap the mic, Inkrest opens to listen, and your refined text is ready to insert when you return
- A home-screen widget and the Action Button for instant capture
- A Share Sheet to clean up text you already have
- On Apple Watch: catch a thought from your wrist
- A Live Activity that keeps your session in the Dynamic Island and on the Lock Screen
BUILT FOR IPAD AND FOLDABLES
Inkrest is a real iPad app, not a stretched-up phone screen — a wider dictation layout and a two-column settings view that make the most of the display. On a foldable phone it opens into a two-page desk.
TEN STYLES
The same spoken note, refined for where it's going: Polished, Email, Meeting Notes, Bullet points, Concise, Social Post, Code Comment, Academic Abstract, Verbatim cleanup, or your own Custom instruction.
SPELLED THE WAY YOU MEAN IT
Curated dictionaries plus your own custom terms, so names, jargon, and product names come out right — without spelling them out loud.
PRIVATE BY DESIGN
No analytics. No crash reporters. No ad SDKs. The only thing Inkrest ever sends over the network is a one-time model download. After that: silence.
NO SUBSCRIPTION. NO ADS. NO ACCOUNT.
Inkrest doesn't track you, doesn't show ads, and never asks you to sign in.
Your words, at rest.
more • Keys no longer stop responding: fixed a rare case where letters stopped typing until you switched apps.
• Autocorrect no longer learns your typos, and now fixes two-letter slips like "ks" for "is".
• Smarter suggestions that know modern words and chat shorthand like "idk" and "ngl".
3.2.2 4 days ago
A keyboard that learns.
• Autocorrect on the Inkrest keyboard now catches far more slips: a neighbouring key, swapped letters, a missing letter, two words typed without a space, and "i" to "I". It's ready the moment the keyboard opens. #hashtags, @mentions and words you add to your vocabulary are never changed.
• One tap, one letter: fast typing no longer doubles letters or swaps their order, and key clicks and haptics are back.
• Word suggestions appear after two letters. Tap one to finish the word.
• The keyboard learns the words you use: undo a correction once, or keep a word a few times, and it stays.
• More contractions without the apostrophe, like "youre" and "shouldve".
• Hold delete to erase whole words.
• Rate or share Inkrest right from Settings.
As always, everything runs on your device. No account, no cloud.
3.2 6 days ago
A desk for your foldable
• Fold it like a laptop and Inkrest stacks up. Your text stays upright on the top half, while every style and the mic sit on the flat half, so you can dictate and polish without juggling the screen.
As always, everything runs on your device. No account, no cloud.
3.1.1 18 Oct
Made for iPhone Duo
• Open iPhone Duo and Inkrest spreads across both pages: your dictation and record button on the left, every style and your recent history on the right, with nothing on the fold.
• Settings lays out along the fold on iPhone Duo: sections on one page, details on the other.
• Cleaner edges on every iPhone: the control bar reaches the screen edges in landscape, and the style chips fade out instead of being cut off.
3.1 17 Oct
Keyboard upkeep — Autocorrect re-tunes itself when the keyboard changes width. Rotate the phone and tap accuracy is recalculated for the new layout.
3.0.2 5 Oct
• Fixed the keyboard's top row on iOS 27: suggestions and emoji are sharp again instead of blurred.
• The keyboard's top row and the "Tap to dictate" label under the mic now show in full.
3.0.1 24 Sept
This update brings IOS 27 support. Now Dictate from your Watch with your phone in your pocket.
iOS 27 lets the Neural Engine transcribe without waking the phone, so a wrist dictation goes through while your phone stays locked and pocketed. If the phone is busy, the polished version catches up on its own instead of getting stranded.
What else is new:
• Watch recordings no longer fail with a background error. The watch records with your wrist up, and tells you plainly on the rare occasion it can't.
• Start dictating from the Lock Screen, Control Center, or the Action Button — no need to open the app first.
• Leaving the app mid-refine won't lose your words. The raw text lands right away, and the polished version slots into History when it's done.
• Text you share into Inkrest waits for the real refinement, and a notification tells you when it's ready.
• History now shows a small watch icon on anything you dictated from your wrist.
• If a copy can't go through while your phone is locked, Inkrest finishes it the next time you open the app.
• Copy tells the truth — it only says refined when it actually is.
• A garbled result gets set aside instead of handed to you, and the audio is kept so you can retry.
• On iPad, long transcripts wrap instead of sliding under the Copy button.
Everything still runs on your device. No accounts, no servers, no tracking.
3.0 16 Sept
A pause in the middle no longer costs you the recording.
• A recording that starts quietly or holds a long pause is no longer thrown away as silence — it's judged by its loudest moment now, not its overall average.
• Text you send to Inkrest from another app survives a slow start. If the model is still warming up, what you shared is kept and Inkrest tells you how to pick it up again.
• Starting a dictation twice in quick succession no longer breaks the hand-off — the keyboard still gets the finished text back, and the "Dictating in Inkrest" strip stays put.
• Swipe-typed words and the names of connected devices stay out of the system log.
As always, everything runs entirely on your device.
2.2.13 7 Sept
Fixes a case where a short spoken instruction came back as a written-out
answer instead of the note you dictated.
2.2.12 25 Aug
Better rewrites on newer devices — 12 GB iPhones and iPads now use the higher-quality model by default.
Tool names it kept getting wrong — "ChatGPT" and "Claude Code" now come out spelled right.
A damaged model download is caught — Inkrest checks the AI model is intact before loading it.
2.2.11 18 Aug
Headphones mid-sentence: Connect AirPods or a headset while you're already recording and the rest of what you say still lands. Switching audio devices mid-dictation used to cut the take short.
A dead microphone tells you: If audio stops reaching the app partway through, recording now stops and says so, instead of looking like it's still listening.
2.2.10 16 Aug
Bug fixes and Improvements
• Model downloads are checksum-verified. Altered files are refused.
• A better-behaved Fast model that sticks to the style you chose.
• A second dictation waits its turn instead of being discarded.
• Delete the history entry you meant — long-press works too.
As always, everything happens on your device.
2.2.9 28 July
This release is all fixes — for the keyboard, sharing, and Apple Watch dictations.
Keyboard
• A dictation waiting to be pasted now appears as a small chip instead of covering the keyboard, so your autocorrect suggestions and the Paste key stay where you expect them.
• Refined text can no longer be inserted twice by accident.
• The "Dictating in Inkrest…" indicator now clears itself properly instead of lingering.
Sharing
• Sending a second piece of text to Inkrest no longer discards the first.
• If a share can't open the app, your text is kept and picked up next time rather than lost.
Apple Watch
• Dictations survive a pocketed iPhone — captures are no longer dropped while waiting to be transcribed.
• A call or interruption mid-recording now keeps what you had already said.
• Retries are more reliable, and the watch tells you when something needs attention.
Also
• Fixed a crash when deleting entries from History.
• Your history now survives a damaged entry instead of clearing.
As always, everything happens on your device.
2.2.8 26 July
A keyboard that types exactly what you tell it.
• Backspace deletes one character per tap, every time — hold to keep deleting, and it won't undo an autocorrect fix.
• Every letter key is now full size — no more undersized "a" and "l" keys causing typos.
• Punctuation spacing is smarter, and swipe-typing won't double up a stray digit or letter anymore.
• Apple Watch dictation catches up faster — the polished version lands as soon as your iPhone can produce it, with fewer duplicate transfers along the way.
As always, everything runs entirely on your device.
2.2.7 22 July
Bug fixes and reliability improvements:
• Recent dictations wait in the keyboard, ready to paste with long press on paste key.
• Long recordings are never lost — an interrupted long session is now kept and offered back instead of discarded.
• Cleaner transcripts — everyday words like "rest" and "head" no longer get wrongly capitalized.
• Honest Watch results — a silent capture now tells you, instead of buzzing success.
• Steadier all around: fixes across recording, refining, licensing, and hand-off.
Thanks for using Inkrest.
2.2.5 18 July
Reliability release — a deep sweep of the capture → transcribe → deliver pipeline.
• Apple Watch: dictations always land. Retries after a hiccup now arrive instead of getting stuck — never as a duplicate — and long captures no longer show a false "taking too long" message.
• Keyboard: auto-insert only when you ask. Restyled text and watch transcripts no longer type themselves into your next field.
• Steadier through audio switches: unplugging or switching headphones mid-dictation no longer disturbs the next take.
• Cancel now works while the speech model is still downloading — no more locked mic on first run.
• Fixes for rare cases where recovered recordings or license checks could misbehave after a system hiccup.
Everything stays on your device — audio and text never leave it.
2.2.4 12 July
This update makes the Apple Watch experience faster and error messages more honest:
• Dictate from your watch without touching your iPhone — the watch now wakes the Inkrest app in the background, so transcripts come back to your wrist even while your phone stays in your pocket.
• Clearer recovery when AI Refinement can't load: the retry button now tells you what it will actually do — try loading again, or resume the download.
• The low-memory notice now names your actual device — iPhone or iPad.
As always: 100% on-device. No account, no cloud, no tracking.
2.2.3 11 July
This update is about one thing: nothing you dictate gets lost.
• Long dictations keep their paragraph breaks through the final polish.
• Keyboard results that really land — the keyboard now checks your text actually arrived, and offers a retry if it didn't.
• Watch dictations are always saved — stored on your iPhone before your wrist sees the result, interruptions or not.
• Trying a new style keeps your tags, length, and where it was dictated.
• Clearer status on iPad — if a model download fails, your iPad now says so and offers a retry.
As always: 100% on-device. No account, no cloud, no tracking.
2.2.2 8 July
This update fixes a crash some iPad users hit during setup, and sharpens the keyboard:
• Fixed: the app could run out of memory and shut down while loading on some iPads. It now loads its on-device models one at a time and adapts to your device.
• Swipe your own words — names and custom terms you've added now work with swipe-to-type.
• More accurate typing — edge keys and the number row are easier to hit.
• Undo a swiped word with one tap, and swipe feedback now shows even with Reduce Motion on.
As always: 100% on-device. No account, no cloud, no tracking.
2.2.1 7 July
• Record longer — dictate past 10 minutes and Inkrest keeps going, then turns it into clean, structured notes.
• Recover interrupted sessions — your recording autosaves as you go, so nothing's lost if you get interrupted.
• Find features faster — new tips surface swipe-to-type on the keyboard, plus Action Button and Siri shortcuts.
• Nothing lost when you switch apps — refinement finishes in the background and still lands on your clipboard.
• Live Activity is now opt-in — the Dynamic Island indicator is off by default; turn it on in Settings.
• More reliable Apple Watch recordings, plus fixes throughout.
As always: 100% on-device. No account, no cloud, no tracking.
2.2 6 July
• Keys no longer stop responding: fixed a rare case where letters stopped typing until you switched apps.
• Autocorrect no longer learns your typos, and now fixes two-letter slips like "ks" for "is".
• Smarter suggestions that know modern words and chat shorthand like "idk" and "ngl".
more Version 3.2.2 4 days ago
Data Not Collected The developer does not collect any data from this app.