iPhone, iPad and Mac
Privacy Mode
Privacy Mode copies your text and saves nothing else. Useful for anything that should not end up in your history.
What it does.
With Privacy Mode on, your text still goes to the clipboard as usual. It just does not show up in your history, and the audio file is not saved. If Diktat crashes mid recording, that recording cannot be restored afterward. Dictate from your Apple Watch, and the same rule applies: your iPhone transcribes and copies, but keeps nothing.
When you need it.
For dictations nobody should see in your history later. A thought you only need once, or something you would rather not have sitting on disk. Your text still lands in the clipboard, so you can paste it right away.
How to turn it on.
You find the switch in Settings, under Privacy. Turning it on asks for confirmation once, because history and crash recovery drop away for recordings from that point on. Recordings you already made stay untouched, the rule only applies going forward. Turning it off needs no confirmation and takes effect right away.
What it doesn't do.
A dictation in Privacy Mode doesn't count toward your 5 free dictations a day. It's never saved at any point, neither as text nor as an audio file. Dictionary rules and paragraphs still apply here, they change the text before it's ever copied. Your history itself never even gets to see this text afterward. The switch always only applies to the one device you set it on. If you have both an iPhone and a Mac, you turn it on separately on each. There's deliberately no sync between devices for this setting.
Mac and Watch in Privacy Mode.
On the Mac, Diktat still pastes the text normally into the focused field and into the clipboard. Privacy Mode doesn't change that at all, both still happen exactly as always. Dictate from your Apple Watch, and your iPhone transcribes the text completely as usual. If your iPhone has Privacy Mode on, it saves that recording just as little as one made directly there. The switch itself sits only on the iPhone or the Mac, never on the watch. The watch itself knows nothing at all about Privacy Mode, it simply records. The actual decision happens each time on whichever device ends up recognizing the text.