v0.6 · Meeting Recording · 100% On-Device
Record meetings on your Mac.
Locally.
System audio and your microphone, captured at the same time. Live notes. Live transcript. Ask questions while the call is happening. Your audio never leaves your Mac.
Decision: ship v0.6 next week
Action: Daniel writes launch post
[12:08] Margaret raised the multilingual gap
Granola's pricing came up — they think we're undercutting on purpose
How it works
Three steps. The Granola workflow, without the cloud trip.
Start the recording
From the Transcribe tab or the menu bar. macOS asks for screen-recording permission once, then never again.
Use the call. We capture both sides.
System audio (everyone else) and your mic, in sync. Take notes in the Notes tab while you talk — auto-saved every keystroke.
End the call. Get a transcript.
Local Parakeet (or WhisperKit) turns the audio into searchable text. Diarized. Exportable. Yours.
The live panel
Three tabs while you record. Each does one thing well.
Notes
A plain text editor. Type while you talk. Auto-saved every keystroke and recovered if your Mac crashes.
Saved as notes.md next to your audio — yours to copy, edit, or move.
Transcript
Streams in as the call happens. Speaker-separated: you on one side, everyone else on the other. Scroll back to a moment you missed without rewinding.
Powered by Parakeet (default) or WhisperKit (98 languages)
Ask
Quick-prompt pills for the moves you make most — “Catch me up,” “What did they just say?” — or type your own. Streams answers from your LLM of choice, never ours.
Bring your own key: OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, LM Studio, OpenRouter
Local. Recoverable. Yours.
100% on-device
System audio via ScreenCaptureKit. Mic via AVAudioEngine. Transcription via Parakeet on the Neural Engine. Nothing is uploaded.
Crash-resilient
Audio is fragmented to disk every second. If your Mac crashes mid-call, reopen the app — the recording is intact.
Library, not lock-in
Meetings live in your local Library, alongside file and YouTube transcripts. Export to TXT, MD, SRT, VTT, DOCX, PDF, or JSON. Audio stays in meeting.m4a next to your notes.md.
Three apps, one workflow
Only one keeps the audio on your Mac.
| MacParakeet | Granola | Otter | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audio leaves your Mac | No | Uploaded | Uploaded |
| Per-minute cap | None | Tiered plans | Tiered plans |
| Subscription | Free | $18+/mo | $17+/mo |
| Account required | No | Yes | Yes |
| Open-source | Yes GPL-3.0 | No | No |
Questions & answers
What permissions does meeting recording need?
Two: Screen & System Audio Recording (for the call audio) and Microphone (for you). Standard macOS prompts; granted once. MacParakeet only uses them while you're actively recording.
What about meetings already in progress?
Start MacParakeet anytime — it captures from the moment you press record forward. You can't recover audio from before the recording started.
Can I use it for non-meetings?
Yes. Interviews, podcast prep, course capture, customer calls — anything you'd want a transcript of. The recording captures any system audio playing on your Mac plus your microphone.
What if my Mac crashes mid-call?
Audio is fragmented to disk every second. Reopen the app — the recording is intact, ready to finalize.
Does it work with Zoom, Google Meet, Slack huddles?
Yes. MacParakeet captures system audio at the OS level via ScreenCaptureKit, so it works with any meeting tool that plays audio through your Mac.
How long can a meeting be?
As long as you have disk space. A 60-minute meeting takes roughly 50–100 MB of audio. There's no built-in time limit.
Where do recordings live?
In your local Library, alongside file and YouTube transcripts. The audio file (meeting.m4a) and your notes (notes.md) are saved to ~/Library/Application Support/MacParakeet/. Yours to keep, move, or delete.
Try it on your next call.
Free and open-source. Download MacParakeet, open the Transcribe tab, click Record meeting.
macOS 14.2+ · Apple Silicon · GPL-3.0