Terms
Last updated 30 July 2026
The short version. Slate is made by one person. Use it on the Macs you own, do not resell it or take it apart, and understand that it comes as it is. If something is wrong, email contact@farhanhossain.com and it will be looked at.
1. The agreement
Slate is made and sold by Farhan Hossain. Downloading, installing, or using Slate means you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the app.
2. What you may do
You get a personal, non-exclusive licence to install and use Slate on Macs you own or control. A paid licence key may be activated on more than one Mac, up to the limit shown at checkout.
3. What you may not do
- Sell, rent, sublicense, or hand out copies of Slate.
- Take the app apart, decompile it, or work backwards from it to build something else, except where the law says you may.
- Share or resell a licence key, or work around the licence check.
- Remove or change the copyright notices in the app.
4. What it costs
Slate is free to use. Nothing is charged, nothing is held back, and there is no subscription. A tip jar is on the way. A tip buys nothing extra and is never required.
If a paid version is offered later, the price and the terms in force at that time apply to that purchase, and never change what you have already paid.
5. Refunds
Slate is free, so there is nothing to refund. If you ever leave a tip and change your mind, email contact@farhanhossain.com with the address you paid with and you will get it back. That is on top of any right to a refund you already have where you live.
6. The licence check
When you activate a licence key, Slate makes one request to the store to check that the key is real. That, the speech model download, and update checks and downloads if you switch them on are the only times Slate uses the network, as set out on the privacy page.
7. Your words are yours
Everything you dictate belongs to you. Slate claims no rights over any of it, and none of it is sent anywhere. See the privacy page.
8. Other people's work
Speech recognition uses the Parakeet model from NVIDIA, licensed CC‑BY‑4.0, through the FluidAudio library, licensed Apache‑2.0. The headline typeface on this website is Newsreader, under the SIL Open Font Licence. Slate itself, its name, and its icon stay the property of Farhan Hossain.
9. It comes as it is
Slate is provided as it is, without any warranty of any kind. Speech recognition makes mistakes. Read what it wrote before you send it, and do not rely on it where a mistake would be costly, unsafe, or hard to undo.
Apple changes macOS regularly, and those changes can break dictation apps. Fixes are made as fast as one person can make them, but no uptime or compatibility is promised.
10. Limits on liability
As far as the law allows, Farhan Hossain is not liable for lost work, lost profit, lost data, or any indirect or knock-on loss from using Slate. If some liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to what you paid for Slate, which during early access is nothing.
Nothing here takes away the consumer rights you have where you live. Those rights cannot be signed away.
11. Ending it
This licence ends if you break these terms. You can end it at any time by deleting the app. The support page explains how to remove everything.
12. Changes to these terms
These terms may change. The date at the top of this page changes when they do. Carrying on using Slate after a change means you accept the new terms.
13. Law
These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, without affecting any protection you have under the law of the country you live in.