Apple Intelligence & Dictation

Optional help with writing up a note: suggestions for the description and type, tidying and expanding text, and dictation straight into the panel.

Requirements

An Apple-silicon Mac with Apple Intelligence turned on in System Settings.
The Private Cloud Compute options need macOS 27. On macOS 26 everything runs on this Mac.

Settings › Note Panel › Apple Intelligence and Dictation shows whether Apple Intelligence is available, with a button to its System Settings page when it isn't. You can turn NoteDrop's use of it off entirely there.

The AI Menu

The sparkles menu in the note panel (beside Insert Snippet) has three commands:

Suggest Description & Type (⌥⌘S) — reads the note and fills in an empty Description, the note type (unless you chose one), Duration if the note states it, and Attendees or the caller's name and Incoming / Outgoing. Anything you'd already filled in is kept; a different suggestion is offered with an Apply button instead.
Tidy Up Text — fixes punctuation, spelling (Australian English) and filler words.
Expand Points into Note — turns terse points into a written note.

Tidy and Expand work on the selection, or the whole note if nothing is selected, and can be undone with ⌘Z. The model is told to use only what's in the note and never to add facts, names or dates — but read the result before you save it.

Description on Save

Optionally, NoteDrop can write an empty Description for you when you save (it becomes part of the file name). Turn on Fill in an empty Description when saving in Settings › Note Panel › Apple Intelligence and Dictation. It's off by default, waits at most four seconds, and never stops the save.

Dictation

Click the microphone button in the panel to dictate. It turns red and pulses with your voice; words appear at the cursor as you speak and firm up as you go. Click again to stop.

The first time, NoteDrop asks for microphone access, and the speech model for your language downloads (progress shows on the button).
After dictating, a Tidy button cleans up just what you said — punctuation, spelling and filler words. Turn it off with Offer to tidy dictated text.
If your language isn't supported, NoteDrop falls back to macOS Dictation.

Dictation is transcribed on this Mac.

Where Requests Run

By default Apple Intelligence runs on this Mac. On macOS 27 you can choose, under Run requests:

Option	Behaviour
On this Mac only	Note text never leaves your Mac.
Prefer this Mac (default)	Runs on this Mac; if the on-device model can't handle a request, it's sent to Apple's Private Cloud Compute.
Prefer Private Cloud Compute	Sends requests to Private Cloud Compute first.

If Private Cloud Compute fails (offline, over quota, or not available to NoteDrop), NoteDrop goes back to the on-device model.

Confidentiality: when a request goes to Private Cloud Compute, the note text involved is sent to Apple's servers, where Apple's Private Cloud Compute privacy guarantees apply (processed only to answer the request, not stored, not accessible to Apple). If your obligations require notes never to leave the Mac, choose On this Mac only. See the privacy policy.