Terms

Last updated: September 5, 2026.

Who we are and how you agree

DeftNib is a product of Open Cloud LLC, a Delaware company. These terms are the agreement between you and us about the app and this website. You agree to them by installing, using, buying or activating DeftNib. If you do not agree, do not use it, and if you already bought it, ask for a refund within the 30 days.

What you buy

A perpetual, personal DeftNib license for US$ 49, valid on up to 3 Macs that you use. It includes every version in the 1.x line. There is no subscription, no update renewal, and nothing that switches off if you stop paying, because there is nothing you are paying.

If a version 2 ever exists it will be a paid, optional upgrade. We never switch 1.x off and there is nothing in it that expires. It runs on the speech engine Apple ships with macOS, so it keeps working for as long as macOS keeps that engine.

The free plan

Without a license, DeftNib works with every feature and a weekly limit, today 4,000 words a week, with no account and no expiry. We may change that limit in a future version; if we do, the app and this page say so.

Your license

A license is personal, non exclusive and not transferable. It lets you install and use DeftNib on the Macs it covers. It does not let you redistribute the app, sell or rent it, reverse engineer it, work around the Mac limit or the free plan counter, or share your key beyond your own Macs. A personal license is for one person and the Macs that person uses: it is not a way to equip an office. For that there are team licenses.

Team licenses

A team pack is a single payment for a fixed number of seats, and a seat is one Mac. The buyer receives an admin key, which manages the seats and activates nothing, and one key per seat. A seat key may be given to one person at a time; the admin can retire a seat and hand its replacement key to someone else as often as the team changes. Whoever buys a team pack agrees to these terms on behalf of their organization, decides who gets a key, and retires seats when people leave. Everything else in these terms applies to each seat exactly as it applies to a personal license, including the four kinds of calls to our servers and the fact that no audio or text ever leaves the Mac.

How it is validated

The license is verified on your own Mac. The app talks to our servers for four things, and none of them carries your voice: activating your license (once per Mac), renewing that Mac's permission (once a month, in the background), checking for updates, and, on the free plan, syncing the week's word counter once per session, when the app starts or as soon as it gets online. That last one sends a hashed machine id and one number; never what you dictated, never when. Apart from that, your Mac downloads Apple's speech models from Apple when you add a language, and the installer when you accept an update. Your audio and your text are never transmitted: there is no code in the app that knows how to. You can dictate all day with Wi-Fi off. If the server does not answer, the app keeps working: it only stops being licensed if the server explicitly says the license was deactivated, which in practice means the order was refunded.

You can see and free up your Macs from the app or at deftnib.com/license. There is a reasonable cap on how many times a year a license can free up a Mac, so that a personal license cannot be used as a team license; if you hit it for a legitimate reason, write to us and we lift it.

Ending it

You can stop using DeftNib whenever you like; there is nothing to cancel. If a key is shared beyond the Macs it covers, or the Mac limit or the free plan counter is worked around, we can deactivate the license without a refund. We tell you why.

Your text

What you dictate is yours. We never see it, so we claim nothing over it. You are responsible for reading what the app wrote before you rely on it and for what you do with it: transcription is good and it is not perfect. DeftNib is a writing tool, not a system of record. It is not designed for medical, legal or financial records that have to be exact by law, and we do not sign agreements such as a HIPAA business associate agreement.

Requirements

DeftNib needs a Mac with Apple Silicon and macOS 26 or later, and Apple Intelligence turned on for cleanup with the local model. The requirements are printed above every download button precisely so nobody buys something they cannot run. If it happened anyway, that is a refund within the 30 days, no argument.

Updates

Updates arrive through Sparkle, the open source updater built into the app. The app checks once a day, tells you when there is a new version and what changed, and installs nothing until you say so. You can skip any version.

Third parties

DeftNib runs on the speech engine and the language model that Apple ships inside macOS. We do not control them, and Apple is not a party to these terms and does not sponsor or endorse the app. Payment is handled by LemonSqueezy as merchant of record, so their terms for buyers apply to the payment itself. Updates use Sparkle, which is open source.

Warranties

The app is provided as it is. We do everything we can to make it work well and we fix what breaks, but we do not guarantee that transcription will be exact, that text will always land in the field you meant, that the app will work with a future version of macOS, or that files on your Mac will never be lost. None of this limits the rights your local law gives you.

Limit of liability

To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you for anything connected with DeftNib is capped at what you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, which on the free plan is nothing. We are not liable for indirect or consequential damages, such as lost profits, lost data or lost time. If you are a consumer in the European Union or the United Kingdom, nothing here takes away the rights your law gives you.

If your use causes a claim

If you use DeftNib to break the law or these terms and that brings a claim against us, you cover it.

Law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, United States, and any dispute goes to the courts there, unless the law where you live says otherwise. Before anything formal, write to support@deftnib.com: we take 30 days to sort it out by talking, and in practice that is where it ends.

Changes to these terms

When these terms change, the date at the top changes with them, and if a change matters, the release notes of the next update say so too. Using DeftNib after that is accepting the new terms; if you do not, stop using it and, within the 30 days, ask for a refund.

The small print

If a court finds one part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still stands. These terms, the privacy policy and the refund policy are the whole agreement between us. You cannot transfer your license or these terms to someone else without asking us first.

Contact

For anything at all: support@deftnib.com.