Neither one makes Omi fully local. Summaries, titles, memories and chat are still produced by Omi’s servers. The sections below cover what each feature does and does not change.
Bring Your Own Keys (Mac)
Open Settings → AI & Automation, expand Advanced, and find Model Provider Keys.- Language model key (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini or OpenRouter) is used for supported memory and insight features. Desktop chat uses Anthropic keys; other language model keys do not remove Omi’s chat limit.
- Deepgram key is used for transcription. Without it, transcription counts toward your Omi plan. Adding a Deepgram key later does not unlock conversations that were already locked when your allowance ran out.
- Keys are saved on your Mac and sent with each request. Omi’s servers keep only a fingerprint to check that a request uses the key you enrolled; they never store the key itself.
- When you sign in, the Mac app re-checks your saved keys with the provider and with Omi. BYOK stays active for 7 days after the last successful check, and a key the provider rejects turns it off.
Your keys live on your Mac, so requests from the phone app do not carry them. Live recording through Omi’s transcription, recordings synced later from your device, and summaries of those conversations use Omi’s keys and count toward your plan, even while BYOK is active on your Mac.
Custom transcription (phone)
Open Settings → Developer Settings → Transcription and choose a provider:
Send raw audio to Omi controls whether the audio itself also goes to Omi. Turning it off stops raw audio uploads, but transcripts and the data cloud features need are still sent so Omi can build your conversations.
What custom transcription covers
- Live transcription only. It applies to audio transcribed as you record. Recordings that are stored on your device and synced later (for example a pendant’s offline storage, or the 15-minute chunks from a Limitless pendant) are uploaded and transcribed by Omi. That is why those recordings show Uploaded · processing on Omi, and why they count toward your plan.
- Summaries still come from Omi. Once a conversation ends, Omi’s servers write its title, summary, action items and memories. With custom transcription these count against your plan’s monthly conversation processing allowance. When that allowance is used up, new conversations keep their transcript but get no summary until the allowance resets or you upgrade.