Privacy Policy
Last Updated: October 1, 2026
Impulse turns your speech into text on your own computer. Your voice and the words you speak never leave it.
What never leaves your computer
- Your voice and microphone audio
- Your transcribed text
- Your dictation history, word counts, and streaks
- Your settings, logs, and file paths
Transcription runs entirely on your CPU or GPU. It works with no network connection at all.
Every network connection Impulse makes
This is the complete list. If it is not here, Impulse does not do it.
| Connection | When | What is sent | Goes to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licence activation and check | When you activate, then about once a day while you are online | Your licence key and a random machine ID, used to count how many PCs a key is on | Our licensing server (Vercel) |
| Anonymous usage counts | Only if you opt in during setup or in Settings | A random install ID, app version, Windows version, and setup milestones such as "activated" or "first dictation" | Our server (Vercel) |
| Speech model download | Once, only if your installer did not include the model | A standard file request, nothing about you | Hugging Face |
| Google Contacts sync | Only if you turn it on and sign in with Google | Google's own sign-in; contact names, email addresses, and phone numbers are read down to your PC | |
| iCloud Contacts import | Only if you choose to import and enter your Apple ID with an app-specific password | Your Apple ID and app-specific password, sent to Apple to sign in and never saved by Impulse; contacts are read down to your PC | Apple (iCloud) |
Like any web request, each of these reveals your IP address to the server that receives it. Our server uses it only as a rate-limit counter that deletes itself within two hours. It is never saved with your licence or usage data.
Working offline
Dictation never needs a connection. Your licence does, occasionally: Impulse checks it about once a day when you are online, and keeps working for 3 days without a check. After 3 days offline, connect once so the licence can be re-checked.
Anonymous usage counts
Off unless you say yes. You can change your answer any time in Settings. When on, it never includes audio, transcribed text, file paths, app names, or anything that identifies you.
Files Impulse keeps on your computer
| File | Purpose | Location |
|---|---|---|
license.json | Cached licence state | %LOCALAPPDATA%\Impulse\state\ |
machine_id.txt | Random device ID | %LOCALAPPDATA%\Impulse\state\ |
whisper_stats.json | Your word counts and streaks | %LOCALAPPDATA%\Impulse\state\ |
config.json | Settings | %LOCALAPPDATA%\Impulse\state\ |
flow.log | Diagnostic log | %LOCALAPPDATA%\Impulse\logs\ |
flow_input.wav | Your latest recording, overwritten by the next one | %LOCALAPPDATA%\Impulse\audio\ |
To remove everything: uninstall Impulse from Windows Settings, then delete %LOCALAPPDATA%\Impulse\.
Buying Impulse
Purchases are handled by Lemon Squeezy, which processes your payment and email address under its own privacy policy. We receive your email address so we can send your licence key and support your purchase.
Third-party components
Impulse bundles open-source components. None of them send data anywhere in Impulse:
| Component | Role | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| Parakeet TDT (via onnx-asr / ONNX Runtime) | Primary speech recognition | CC-BY-4.0 / MIT |
| faster-whisper / CTranslate2 | Speech recognition | MIT / Apache-2.0 |
| Whisper.cpp / GGML | Speech recognition fallback | MIT |
| PySide6 (Qt for Python) | On-screen recording indicator | LGPL v3 |
Changes
When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it.
Contact
Questions about privacy: [email protected]