Just Transcribe.
Advanced Privacy
No commercial app on a personal phone is authorised for classified information, and Just Transcribe is not an exception. What follows is about the large body of sensitive but unclassified work that currently gets written on paper because the alternative was worse.
Most privacy claims in this category are marketing, and in a defence context marketing gets people hurt. So the boundary comes before the pitch: this is a consumer app with no accreditation, no certification, no formal assurance and no security audit published. It is not approved for classified material and nothing on this page should be read as suggesting otherwise.
What it does have is an unusual property for a modern app: after the initial setup it makes no network connection at all, degraded or delayed or otherwise. For work that is sensitive but unclassified, that is worth something.
Uploads content to a vendor, phones home with analytics, maintains an account, syncs in the background, and retries when the network returns. Each of those is a signal, and a pattern of signals is information even when the content is encrypted.
In an operational setting the metadata is frequently the exposure: when a device transmitted, how much, and to where.
Records, transcribes, labels speakers, summarises and translates entirely on the device, with no account and no analytics SDK anywhere in it. The App Store privacy label reads Data Not Collected.
It opens a connection exactly twice in its life: to download a speech model you select, and for the App Store purchase. After that the radios can stay off indefinitely and nothing degrades.
That is a narrow and testable property, not a security posture. The device, the physical environment, the handling rules and the classification decision are all outside the software, and all of them matter more than the software does.
Every example here assumes material your security officer has confirmed may be handled on the device in question.
A debrief is a fast multi-person conversation where the details decay within hours, and the written version is usually assembled from four people's partial memories a day later.
Where the content is unclassified, a transcript with speaker labels turns the reconstruction into an editing job.
In the app: record, transcribe locally, and let speaker separation attribute the discussion. Save regular colleagues' voices once so transcripts arrive named.
Serial numbers, fault descriptions, parts, hours. Unglamorous, high volume, and currently written on a notepad in the rain by someone wearing gloves.
Spoken notes are faster and more complete, and the transcript is searchable afterwards, which the notepad never was.
In the app: dictate, transcribe on the device, and search the full text of every note you have made. Export as text into whatever system actually holds the record.
Exercise debriefs, instructor feedback, syllabus development. Unclassified by design, voluminous, and the part of the cycle that most often goes unrecorded because writing it up is nobody's favourite task.
In the app: record the session, summarise into key points and action items with a local model, then export the summary for the lessons learned process.
Faraday rooms, hardened facilities, ships, submarine tenders, hangars, field sites with no coverage. Every cloud tool fails here, and the ones that queue for later are worse than the ones that fail immediately.
This is the plainest technical case on the page: an app that never expected a network cannot be disappointed by its absence.
In the app: nothing special. It has no online mode to fall back from. Transcription, translation and summarising all complete with the radios off.
Fifty-nine transcription languages with automatic detection, more than 1,600 through Omnilingual, and on-device translation of a finished transcript into fifty-five. Useful for understanding what was said and deciding what needs a qualified linguist.
It is a comprehension aid, never a substitute for a cleared interpreter.
In the app: transcribe in the source language first, then translate locally for a rough reading. Treat the output as an indication, not as a translation of record.
The properties that matter in this context are mostly negative ones.
This table is short on purpose. Almost nothing about the regulatory picture changes because an app runs locally.
| Classification | Unchanged and absolute. Classified material requires accredited systems, cleared handling and approved devices. No commercial app qualifies, and that includes Just Transcribe. |
|---|---|
| Controlled unclassified information | Depends entirely on your organisation's rules for the device, not on the app. Ask before, not after. |
| Device approval and mobile policy | Unchanged. Whether a personal or issued phone may hold this content at all is a decision made above the app, and often the answer is no. |
| Operational security | Unchanged. A device that holds sensitive notes is a device that must not be lost, borrowed, charged from an unknown port or left unattended. |
| Recording other people | Unchanged, and in a multinational setting complicated. Local law applies wherever you are standing. |
| Records management | Unchanged. If something is an official record it belongs in the official system. A transcript on a phone is a working note on its way there. |
No accreditation, no certification, no published security audit. If your process requires any of those, this app does not meet it and will not pretend to.
May this material be held on this device at all? The app runs everything locally and makes no network connection once the model is downloaded, which I can demonstrate in a shielded room. It has no accreditation, no certification and no published audit, so I am not asking whether the app is approved. I am asking whether the material is.
That is the right order. The software question only matters once the classification question is answered, and for classified material the answer is always the accredited system.
The first step is the one people skip.
Physical and device security is where the remaining risk lives: passcode rather than a short PIN, biometrics per your policy, encryption, remote wipe, and a clear rule about what happens if the device is lost. The app cannot help with any of that.
The most important section on the page, and the reason it is written in this order.
What it is: a very private notebook that happens to be good at speech, built for civilians. Inside those limits it is useful, and outside them it is a liability that no amount of on-device processing fixes.
No. Classification rules are about accredited systems and approved handling, not about whether a radio is switched on. An unaccredited consumer app on an unapproved device is a violation regardless of its network behaviour, and the fact that it is offline is not a mitigation. If the material is classified, use the accredited system.
No. It has no accreditation, no certification under any national scheme, and no published independent security audit. It is a consumer app sold on the App Store by a one-person company in the Netherlands. Anyone telling you otherwise is wrong, including any future marketing that contradicts this paragraph.
Observe it rather than trust it. Download the model on a permitted network, then put the device in airplane mode or a shielded room and run a full cycle: record, transcribe, label speakers, summarise, translate. All of it completes offline. If your organisation can inspect network traffic on a test device, do that too: that is a stronger check than anything I can assert.
Because the alternative is somebody reading a confident privacy claim and drawing the wrong conclusion in a context where that matters. The app has one unusual property, which is that it makes no network calls after setup. Everything a defence reader actually needs to know beyond that is a limitation, so the limitations get the space.
Same answer, same order. Ask your security officer whether the material may be on the device, then worry about which app. The realistic use is the unclassified majority of the working day: meeting notes, maintenance records, training feedback, lessons learned. Most of that still gets written on paper.
If your security officer permits it, verify the network behaviour yourself before you rely on it: download a model, switch to airplane mode, and run a complete cycle. A property you have observed is worth more than a paragraph on a vendor's website, including this one.
Or first: How Advanced Privacy works · The full fact sheet
Written by the developer, and not a security claim. I make Just Transcribe. It has no security accreditation of any kind, has not been through any national certification scheme, and is sold on a consumer app store. It is not approved for classified material, on any device. Your security officer decides what may be processed where, and if their answer is no, that is the answer.
Written 26 September 2026, updated 3 October 2026 for Just Transcribe 1.36. Numbers and sources on the fact sheet.