Security and Trust

Updated September 7, 2026

Beam transcribes speech on your own Mac. No audio, no transcript, and no document ever reaches us, because there is nothing on our side that could receive one. This page is the evidence for that claim, written for the people whose job is to check it.

Beam is published by SparQan LLC, a Texas limited liability company. Security contact: support@justbeaming.com, also published at /.well-known/security.txt.

The architecture, in one paragraph

Speech recognition runs on-device through models executed locally on Apple silicon. The optional cleanup pass, which fixes grammar and formatting, uses a language model that also runs locally. Beam makes no API call to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or any other cloud AI provider, because it contains no code that could make one. The model weights sit on your own disk. Meetings and notes are captured, transcribed and summarised on the same machine. There is no account, no login, no server-side transcription queue and no cloud inference of any kind. Beam works with the network cable pulled out, and that is the simplest way to demonstrate it.

Every network call Beam can make

This list is exhaustive. Nothing below is required for transcription to work.

Beam contains no analytics SDK, no advertising identifier, no crash-reporting service and no third-party tracker. There is no telemetry to disable because none was written.

Verify it yourself, in about ten minutes

We would rather you tested this than believed it.

1. Watch the network. Run Little Snitch, Wireshark, or tcpdump while dictating for several minutes. You will see no outbound connection carrying audio, because none is made.
2. Pull the cable. Disable networking entirely and keep dictating. Everything continues, which is only possible if the work is local.
3. Check the signature and notarization.

   codesign -dv --verbose=4 /Applications/Beam.app
   spctl -a -vvv /Applications/Beam.app

   The Team Identifier must read 6P8A7DR398 and Gatekeeper must report the app as accepted and notarized by Apple. Anything else is not our build.
4. Read the file list. Transcripts and notes are plain files in your own Library folder. Open them, move them, delete them.

What we store, and where

The complete set of personal data SparQan LLC holds about a customer:

• The email address used to buy or to request a download.
• The license key and its identifier.
• Install identifiers for the Macs a license is activated on, up to the seat limit, with activation timestamps.

That is all of it. We hold no audio, no transcripts, no documents, no usage history, no IP-address logs of our own, and no payment details.

One exception, and it is entirely in your hands. Because Beam has no automated telemetry, we cannot see when it crashes; we only learn of it if you tell us. If you choose to email us a macOS crash report, be aware that a crash report is a snapshot of memory and can contain fragments of recent text, including transcribed words. Beam shows you the full contents before anything is sent, nothing is transmitted automatically, and we delete any crash report you send once the issue it describes is closed.

The complete data-flow account written for end users is in the Privacy Policy.

Subprocessors

No subprocessor receives customer speech, transcripts or documents, because Beam never transmits them.

Certifications, stated plainly

Beam is not SOC 2 audited and holds no ISO 27001 certificate. We will not imply otherwise, and if you see a badge claiming either on any page of ours, it is not ours.

This is a structural choice, not a roadmap delay. A SOC 2 report attests to the controls a vendor operates over customer data held in its own systems. The only records we hold are an email address, a license key and install identifiers. Your speech, your transcripts, your meeting recordings and your documents are never among them, and never transit our infrastructure, so the systems such a report would examine for that content do not exist.

What we offer instead is verifiability. Every claim on this page can be tested from outside in an afternoon, which is a stronger form of assurance than an annual report about a system you cannot inspect. If your process requires a completed questionnaire, write to us and we will answer it.

Regulatory posture

Software supply chain

Beam is distributed directly, signed with an Apple Developer ID under Team Identifier 6P8A7DR398, built with the hardened runtime, and notarized and stapled by Apple before every release. Updates are delivered through Sparkle over HTTPS and each update is cryptographically signed; an update that fails signature verification is refused.

Third-party components and their licenses are listed in full inside the app, under Settings, and ship with the bundle.

Reporting a vulnerability

Write to support@justbeaming.com. Tell us what you found and how to reproduce it. We will acknowledge within three business days and keep you informed until it is resolved. We will not pursue legal action against anyone who researches in good faith, acts against their own installation, and gives us reasonable time before disclosing. We do not currently run a paid bounty.

Deployment and procurement

Beam installs as a standard macOS application. It does not install a kernel extension, a background daemon outside the user session, or a system-wide network filter.

Beam has no user accounts, so there is nothing to provision: no seat to create, no directory to sync, no single sign-on to configure. A person installs it, the fourteen day trial needs nothing from you, and a license is a key that activates on up to two Macs. If your policy requires a review before install, this page is the review, and the tests above take about ten minutes.

The two that cannot be pre-approved are a deliberate Apple restriction and, from a privacy standpoint, the right one: nobody, including a fleet administrator, can silently switch on a microphone. Ship the PPPC payload for Accessibility and the person at the Mac approves the rest once, at first use.

Managed deployment through Jamf, Kandji or Intune, invoicing and purchase orders, security questionnaires, and a data processing agreement are all available. Write to support@justbeaming.com and a person will answer.

Run the test yourself