Session notes between clients
The 10-minute gap between clients. Open your EHR, hit the hotkey, narrate the session while it is fresh. SOAP, DAP, BIRP — your template, your structure, your words.
For therapists, counselors, and mental health clinicians
Dictate session notes on your own laptop.
SnailText is a local dictation app that does not require a Business Associate Agreement, because no third party ever receives your audio. Voice runs entirely on your Mac or Windows device; PHI never leaves the laptop.
No account needed. Works offline.
The compliance treadmill
Every cloud dictation tool needs a BAA. Here is why.
When you dictate a session note into Mentalyc, Supanote, or any cloud-based clinical tool, the audio of your patient talking about their trauma leaves your device. It hits a server you do not own, gets transcribed by a model you cannot inspect, and (usually) lands in a database you have no visibility into.
That server is a "business associate" under HIPAA. Which is why every one of those tools makes you sign a Business Associate Agreement before you can use them. The BAA exists to define liability when — not if — that data gets mishandled.
It is a reasonable trade for some practices. For others, it is a category of risk that does not need to exist in the first place. Architectural decisions made before the data even moves are simpler than legal ones made after.
How it fits a clinical day
Where voice typing for therapists earns its keep.
Treatment plans
Goals, objectives, interventions, measurable outcomes. The kind of writing that takes 40 minutes typing and 8 minutes speaking.
Insurance documentation
Authorization requests, justification narratives, progress summaries. The paragraphs that nobody enjoys writing but everybody has to.
Supervision notes
If you are a supervisor, the running notes on supervisees. If you are receiving supervision, your own consultation prep.
Referral letters and consult notes
Communications with prescribers, primary care, schools. Short, formal, repetitive — exactly the kind of writing voice is good for.
Works in your EHR
Same hotkey, any EHR.
SnailText works with the major mental-health EHRs in North America — SimplePractice, TherapyNotes, TheraNest, Owl Practice, ICANotes, Valant, and others. The mechanism is simple: SnailText pastes into whatever text field has focus, exactly the way Ctrl+V does. No EHR-specific integration to maintain, no SDK to break when your EHR ships an update.
Practice management & EHR
SimplePractice TherapyNotes TheraNest TherapyAppointment Owl Practice ICANotes Valant Procentive Kareo
Documents & communication
Word Google Docs Outlook Gmail macOS Notes Notion
If you can type into it, you can dictate into it. No "integration" to wait on.
Why local matters here
PHI never leaves the laptop.
A session note contains some of the most sensitive information your clients will ever generate — diagnoses, suicidal ideation, abuse history, substance use, relationship details. The kind of content that, if leaked, causes real harm to real people.
Cloud dictation moves that content across the public internet to a third party. Even with TLS, even with vendor security audits, the data has touched a system you do not control. That fact is the reason BAAs exist.
SnailText runs Whisper locally. The audio is processed in RAM and discarded the moment the text is ready. Nothing on disk, nothing on a server. You can verify this in your network monitor — no outbound traffic during dictation.
What we are not
A typing tool, not a clinical AI.
SnailText turns speech into text. That is the entire feature surface. We do not auto-generate SOAP notes from a recorded session. We do not suggest diagnoses. We do not write the treatment plan for you.
Those things exist — Mentalyc, Eleos, Blueprint — and for some clinicians they are the right tool. For others, the idea of an AI inferring clinical content is a liability problem of its own. SnailText sits firmly in the second camp: the words you say are the words that get pasted, nothing added, nothing rewritten.
If you want AI cleanup, do it after, in a tool you trust, with your eyes on every word.
Pricing
Free to start. No credit card.
Compact local models handle most clinical dictation — short notes, common vocabulary, clear speech. Pro adds larger models for harder cases (heavy accents, non-English work, multi-paragraph documentation) and your own custom dictionary for terms Whisper does not know yet. Pro is $7.49/month or $89/year and covers up to 3 devices; the free tier has no time limit or word cap.
Free
$0 always
Compact local models. Unlimited dictation. No account.
Pro
$7.49 / month or $89/yr
Advanced local models. Up to 3 devices. 30-day refund.
FAQ
Common questions from therapists.
HIPAA compliance is a property of how a covered entity handles PHI — not a property of a single tool. SnailText processes audio locally and never transmits it, which removes one large category of risk (data in transit to a third party) from your compliance picture. You are still responsible for the rest: disk encryption, access control on your device, audit logs as required by your organization. Always confirm with your practice's compliance officer or HIPAA consultant before adopting any new tool.
No — and that is the structural point. A BAA defines responsibilities when a third party (the "business associate") handles PHI on your behalf. With SnailText running locally, there is no third party processing the audio. SnailText the company is not a business associate in the legal sense, because we never receive your audio or your notes. (We do offer optional anonymous error reporting; it is off by default and never contains transcript text.)
If your EHR has a text input you can type into — web-based, desktop, or hybrid — SnailText works there. The hotkey pastes into whichever field has focus, the same way your clipboard does. SimplePractice, TherapyNotes, TheraNest, Owl Practice, ICANotes — all tested. Browser-based EHRs work identically to desktop ones.
Common terms (DSM diagnoses, medication names, common interventions) — generally yes. Less common ones — your custom dictionary handles them. The custom dictionary is a Pro feature; you add a term once and SnailText replaces the misheard version every time. Most clinicians end up with 30–50 entries.
SnailText itself stores nothing — the audio is gone the moment the text is ready, and the transcript goes wherever you paste it. The risk surface is your EHR and your local file storage, not SnailText. Full-disk encryption (FileVault on Mac, BitLocker on Windows) is what protects the rest, and that is true regardless of which dictation tool you use.
Accuracy depends on three things: which Whisper model you pick (Base through Large-v3), your microphone quality, and your speech pattern. A laptop mic in a quiet office with the Medium model handles common clinical vocabulary cleanly; heavy accents or noisy environments benefit from Large-v3 (Pro). The custom dictionary closes the gap on niche terminology — DSM codes, medication brand names, your supervisor's last name.
Also for
Same hotkey. Different workflow.
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Vibe-coders
Speak prompts to AI agents
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Developers
Code, commits, Slack — by voice
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Writers
Drafts at speaking speed
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Students
Notes and essays without typing
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Project managers
Status updates in 30 seconds
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Lawyers
Privileged work product stays local
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RSI
Voice when typing hurts
Comparing tools? Read SnailText vs Wispr Flow or SnailText vs SuperWhisper.
Try it
Voice for the notes. Nowhere else.
Free to start. No account needed.
⌘ Shift Space — that's the only thing you need to remember.