Does Ducktate Work on Windows? (Mac Only, 2026)

Quick answer: No. Ducktate is a native macOS app and runs on Mac only. It needs a Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) on macOS 14 or later, and meeting capture needs macOS 14.4 or later. There is no Windows version, and this page does not promise one. If you are on Windows, Ducktate will not run on your PC. What it is good at, if you do have a Mac, is on-device push-to-talk dictation into any app, no-bot meeting capture that keeps audio on the machine, and a plain-Markdown notes library you own. This page states the requirement plainly and then explains exactly what you get on the Mac, so you can decide whether a Mac-based setup fits how you work.

No. Ducktate is a native macOS app and runs on a Mac only. There is no Windows version, and this page does not promise one. To run Ducktate you need a Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) on macOS 14 or later, and its no-bot meeting capture needs macOS 14.4 or later. On a Windows PC it will not install and will not run. If you are Windows-only, the honest answer is that Ducktate is not for you today, and a cross-platform tool is the right category to look at instead.

The exact requirement

That is the whole compatibility story. Ducktate is Mac software. It is not a web app you can open in a browser on Windows, and there is no Windows installer to download. If the machine you want to use is a Windows PC, stop here: Ducktate cannot run on it.

Why it is built for the Mac

Ducktate is Mac-only for concrete technical reasons, not as a temporary gap. Its transcription runs on-device using Whisper through Apple frameworks, which lean on Apple Silicon to run the speech model locally so the audio never leaves the machine. Its meeting capture records your mic plus the other participants through a Core Audio tap, a macOS audio feature, which is how it captures both sides of a call with no bot joining and without asking for screen-recording permission. Those are macOS technologies. A Windows version would not be a recompile; it would be a different app built on different audio and machine-learning plumbing. So rather than ship a weaker cross-platform port, Ducktate is a Mac app that uses what the Mac provides.

What you actually get on the Mac

If you do have a Mac, here is what the setup covers, so you can judge whether it fits how you work.

Push-to-talk dictation into any app. Hold Right Option anywhere on the Mac, speak, and release, and the text is pasted where your cursor is: an email, a chat box, a code comment, a document. Transcription runs on your Mac, so the audio stays on the machine. This is free, with no time limit.

No-bot meeting capture. Ducktate detects your Slack Huddles, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Zoom, and Discord calls and, after asking you, captures both sides through the Mac audio system. No bot joins the call, nothing shows up in the participant list, and no screen-recording permission is needed. The call becomes a note with a summary and action items. This is a Pro feature.

AI cleanup you control. An optional cleanup step can turn the raw transcript into a titled, tagged note. You choose the engine: your own ChatGPT account, a local model on your Mac through Ollama, any model through OpenRouter, or none at all, in which case you keep the raw transcript. There is no per-word API bill forced on you.

A notes library you own. Every dictation and every meeting is filed as plain Markdown in a folder you choose, auto-titled and tagged, and searchable inside the app. The files are ordinary Markdown on your disk, so you can open, move, or back them up with any tool. Nothing is locked in a vendor cloud.

Privacy by architecture. Because transcription is on-device, no audio is uploaded for the transcription step, and the optional cleanup sends text, not audio, to whichever engine you picked, or nothing at all if you keep it local. Note that Ducktate holds no security certifications: on-device processing reduces what is exposed, but it is an architecture choice, not a certification, and not a substitute for one.

The bottom line

Ducktate does not work on Windows, and this page will not pretend otherwise or promise a future build. It is a Mac app that needs Apple Silicon on macOS 14 or later. If you have a Mac, it gives you private on-device dictation, no-bot meeting capture, and a Markdown notes library you own. If your only machine is a Windows PC, Ducktate is not the tool for you right now. To see the Mac workflow in more depth, read about private, on-device meeting notes on a Mac or how Ducktate transcribes with zero external API calls.

Compare Ducktate with

• Best AI Meeting Notetaker Without a Bot (2026)
• Best Mac Dictation Apps in 2026
• Can You Use OpenAI Whisper for Dictation on a Mac?
• Ducktate vs Apple Dictation on Mac (2026)
• Ducktate vs Fathom: On-Device Notes vs a Meeting Bot
• Ducktate vs Granola: On-Device vs Cloud Notes
• Ducktate vs MacWhisper: Notes vs Transcription
• Ducktate vs Notion: Private Voice Notes vs Cloud
• Ducktate vs Otter.ai: On-Device Notes vs a Bot
• Ducktate vs Superwhisper: Notes vs Dictation
• Ducktate vs Wispr Flow: On-Device vs Cloud AI
• Fireflies.ai Alternatives for Mac: No-Bot Notes
• Granola Alternatives for Private Meeting Notes on Mac (2026)
• Granola Waitlist Alternative: No Gmail, No Calendar
• Wispr Flow Alternatives for Mac (2026)