Offline AI note taker: 6 meeting apps that keep your audio on your own machine

An offline AI note taker records, transcribes and summarizes a meeting without sending the audio to anyone's server. As of October 2026, only some apps say so in their own documentation, and the details differ: some keep everything local, some only the transcript, some only on a paid tier. This guide shows exactly what each one keeps on your machine.

Prices and plan details were checked on each vendor's site on October 23, 2026. We did not install or test these apps. Everything below is what each company publishes about itself, linked where it says it.

How we checked each offline AI note taker

The word "offline" gets stretched. A meeting app can capture audio on your laptop, stream it to a cloud transcription service and still say it "runs locally." So we only included a tool if its own site or docs say that transcription happens on your device, and we note which of the three stages (recording, transcription, summary) that covers.

Upfynd lists 167 meetings and video tools and 145 AI audio and voice tools as of October 23, 2026. Many well-known meeting note takers, including Granola and Jamie (covered below), send audio to cloud services for transcription. That is a reasonable design for many teams, but it's the wrong one if your calls involve client files, legal advice, patient details or unannounced deals.

Our view: for meetings like those, start with an offline AI note taker and treat a cloud note taker as the exception you justify. The rest of this guide is the evidence you need to make that call yourself.

The best offline AI note taker for each kind of user

Google AI Edge Foresight: the free on-device meeting note taker for Apple Silicon

Google's Foresight product page is the clearest privacy statement in this list. Its FAQ says "All AI inference runs 100% locally on your device," and that "meeting audio, and notes never leave your computer." It also says both the Gemma model and the local embeddings engine run without internet, so you can use it on a plane.

How it works: Foresight transcribes system audio alongside Google Meet, Zoom or in-person conversations, and you type shorthand bullets that it expands into full notes using the transcript. You can point it at PDFs, Google Docs, Microsoft Office files, plain text, Markdown and web bookmarks, and it surfaces answers from those files during the call. Google says it is powered by EmbeddingGemma 2, a 740M-parameter on-device embedding model, combined with Gemma 4.

The catch: it is Mac-only and "optimized for Apple Silicon," and Google publishes no RAM, storage, macOS version or language requirements. Google Workspace accounts are blocked by default; an admin has to turn on Early Access Apps and Core Data Access in the Admin console first. The page lists no price and offers a direct download, so it costs nothing today, but Google has not said how long the experiment will stay free. Skip it if you are on Windows or need a vendor commitment.

MacWhisper: local transcription for meetings on any Mac call app

MacWhisper is a Mac transcription app that says it uses "local models to transcribe your files" and can "process sensitive content locally without data ever leaving your Mac." It records meetings from Zoom, Teams, Webex, Skype, Chime, Discord and more without a bot joining.

The pricing is simple: a free version, and MacWhisper Pro for €64 as a one-time license with lifetime updates. Its own comparison table marks meeting recording as a Pro feature, so the free version is a file transcriber, not a meeting note taker.

The catch: MacWhisper also connects to cloud services (OpenAI, Anthropic, Deepgram, ElevenLabs and others) for transcription and summaries. It is only offline if you choose local models for both steps, for example Ollama or LM Studio for summaries. Skip it if you want a guided notes experience rather than a transcript you work with.

Meetily: the open source local meeting notetaker for Mac and Windows

Meetily says recording and transcription run on your device using Whisper.cpp, and it captures system audio, so it works with Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Slack Huddles and Webex without a bot. The Community edition is free and open source under the MIT license.

Summaries are where you choose. Meetily can summarize with a local model through Ollama, or with your own API key for a cloud provider such as Anthropic Claude or Groq; in that case, Meetily says only the transcript text goes to the provider, never the audio. Pro costs $10 per user a month billed annually ($120 a year) and adds speaker identification, advanced exports and automatic meeting detection.

The catch: there is no native Linux app yet (Linux means building from source), and the features that make a note taker feel finished, such as speaker identification, sit in Pro. Skip it if you are not comfortable picking and running a local summarization model.

Off Grid AI: a local AI suite with meeting transcription in Pro

Off Grid AI is a broader local AI app: chat, dictation, image generation and an OpenAI-compatible API on your own machine. For meetings, its site says they are "Transcribed on this Mac. No bot joins your call." The project's GitHub README says the Pro layer records Google Meet and Zoom, transcribes locally with Whisper, and uses an LLM to write a title, summary and attendee list, with all model inference local.

Sources disagree on the price of that feature. A setup guide on DEV, written by the CTO of Wednesday Solutions (the company named in Off Grid AI's license), calls the meeting notetaker free with "no subscription." The README places meetings in Pro. On the Off Grid AI site, Pro is $49.99 one-time as a limited-time offer (regular price $119), or a monthly plan.

The catch: by the README's own account, the app still makes some network calls, for Pro licensing, model downloads from Hugging Face and update checks. It means "offline" applies to your meeting data, not to the app as a whole. Skip it if you only want a note taker and not a full AI workspace.

superwhisper: offline dictation that also handles meetings

superwhisper is mainly a voice-to-text app for macOS, Windows, iOS and Android. Its site says it "works offline," and the free plan includes Meetings on Mac along with unlimited use of Whisper models. Pro shows as $8.49 a month on the site's monthly toggle and adds cloud models, your own API keys and file transcription.

The catch: superwhisper's FAQ says offline models "only run really well on Apple Silicon macs" and that Intel Macs work best with cloud models. Meeting notes are one feature among many, not the product's focus. Skip it if you are on an Intel Mac and need everything local.

screenpipe: local audio capture as part of a full work history

screenpipe is not a note taker in the usual sense. It records your screen and audio so AI tools can search your work history, and its site says "raw history stays local by default." The free plan captures screen, audio and meetings on your device; Basic costs $21 a month for full searchable history.

The catch: its pricing page estimates about 30 GB of storage a month and 600 MB to 4 GB of RAM, and the site does not say summaries are generated on-device. It runs on macOS 13+, Windows 10+ and Linux. Choose it if you want meetings as part of a searchable record of everything; skip it if you only want meeting notes.

Is Granola an offline note taker? No, and bot-free is not the same thing

Granola is the app most people compare Foresight to, and it is not offline. Granola's security page says it uses transcription providers "like Deepgram and Assembly" and AI providers "like OpenAI and Anthropic" to summarize meetings. It doesn't store the audio, but notes are stored in a US-hosted AWS environment.

The same pattern applies to several bot-free tools. Jamie captures audio on your device, but its security page says meeting audio is "streamed for transcription and never stored," with processing in the EEA, Switzerland and the UK. Bluedot records through a Chrome extension or desktop app instead of a bot, and its site does not say that transcription happens locally.

None of this makes those tools unsafe. Granola and Jamie both publish their retention and processing statements, which is what lets you check them. But "no bot in the call" only changes what other participants see. If your requirement is that audio never reaches a third-party server, you need one of the tools in the table above.

What hardware do you need to run meeting transcription locally?

Local transcription runs on your own processor, so the hardware floor matters more than it does for cloud apps. Published requirements, as of October 2026:

• Google AI Edge Foresight: an Apple Silicon Mac; Google publishes no RAM or storage minimum.
• Off Grid AI: the DEV setup guide lists an M1 Mac or modern Windows CPU, 8 GB of RAM and 10 GB of free disk as the minimum, and 16 GB of RAM or more as recommended.
• Meetily: an Apple Silicon build on Mac, and an AVX2-capable x64 CPU on Windows.
• superwhisper: offline models are recommended only on Apple Silicon Macs.
• screenpipe: 600 MB to 4 GB of RAM and roughly 30 GB of storage a month, on macOS 13+, Windows 10+ or Linux.

If you are on an Intel Mac, the vendors' own guidance points you toward cloud models. That's the trade-off: on-device processing keeps audio off other people's servers, but it needs a recent machine.

Do offline AI note takers need consent from participants?

Yes, the same as any recorder. Keeping the audio local protects it from third parties; it does not change whether you may record. US federal law allows recording when you are a party to the communication or one of the parties has given prior consent, and state laws can require more.

Bot-free and offline tools make this easier to forget, because nobody sees a recorder join the call. Say at the start that you're taking AI notes, and check the rules where each participant is. This is not legal advice; for regulated work, ask your counsel.

Which offline AI note taker to start with

• On an Apple Silicon Mac and fine with an experiment: start with Google AI Edge Foresight.
• Already transcribing files on a Mac: MacWhisper Pro adds meeting recording for a one-time price.
• Need Windows, open source or a team rollout: Meetily's Community edition, then Pro if you need speaker identification.
• Want a full local AI workspace: Off Grid AI, after checking which tier includes meetings today.

Then compare alternatives side by side in the Meetings & Video category. If you make an on-device note taker that isn't listed yet, you can submit it for free.