The why underneath the product
The five principles behind ploca
What decides every choice in the product
These principles compound. None of them stands alone, and each makes the others easier to keep. When a decision is hard, we walk it through all five. The right answer is the one that respects every one.
1.Subtraction is the key feature
We ship less, done exceptionally well, instead of more, done adequately. Every option is one more thing to think about. Every setting is a knob that can be set wrong. Every menu item is a paragraph of documentation and a support burden.
So when a competitor has a feature Ploca does not, the answer is often that Ploca deliberately does not have it. We write down why, rather than reflexively adding it. The absence is the design.
2.Privacy is structural, not policy
Apps that promise privacy in a policy ask you to trust them. Ploca does the opposite. Privacy is built into the architecture, so trust is not required. You can watch its network activity with a tool like Little Snitch and verify the silence yourself.
Audio is in memory only because there is no code that writes it to disk. Transcripts do not leave the machine because there is no code that sends them. Telemetry is not switched off; it was never built. Any feature that would need data to leave the machine, or a new permission, has to be defended explicitly against this principle.
3.Specialise, do not sprawl
We pick a narrow lane and make it exceptional. Ploca runs on Apple Silicon and macOS 13 or later. No Intel Mac, no Windows, no Linux. One push-to-talk key. One transcription model, chosen for you. A small set of language modes, tuned deliberately for how people actually speak.
The cost is real: anyone outside that lane cannot use Ploca. The benefit is real too. Anyone inside it gets a tool built for them specifically. Indian-mode dictation is not Whisper with a Hindi prompt. It is a vocabulary pack tuned for code-switched speech.
4.Honest voice over marketing
Ploca describes what it does, not how it should make you feel. Never powerful, never seamless, never effortless. Marketing buzzwords are a tell that a product cannot speak for itself.
We trust you to recognise value when you see it, and we do not hide the trade-offs. Refine is English-only for now. The build is around 180 MB, and the first launch downloads a speech model sized to your Mac, around 1 to 3 GB more. We say so plainly. In a market full of noise, calm reads as substance.
5.Defaults you do not have to think about
Settings exist for preferences that genuinely matter, not as a hedge against picking the right default ourselves. Ploca chooses the right model, the right injection method, and the right refinement so you do not have to. The first time you open it, you should be dictating within minutes, not configuring.
A new setting needs a real reason to exist. "Some people might prefer this" is not enough. "Without this, a whole group of people hits a wall and quits" is. The aim is that most people never open Settings at all.
If this is the kind of tool you have been looking for, the public beta is open and free until 30 August 2026.