Minutes for Mac · macOS 26 · Apple Silicon

Meeting notes that never leave your Mac.

Minutes records both sides of a call through your Mac's own audio, writes the transcript and the summary with the models inside macOS, and catches what people agreed to. No bot joins the call. Nothing is uploaded, ever. The download needs no account: you sign in only to start the free week or to buy.

Get Minutes, $15 once Try it free for 7 days

One payment, tax included, two Macs, every future version · no card for the trial · requires macOS 26 on Apple Silicon · signed and notarized · 14-day refund

Minutes after a call: the summary, decisions and action items on the left, and on the right five catches, each with an Add to Calendar or Add to Reminders button. The sidebar reads Model: Apple on-device, Network: never used.

Real screenshot. A finished meeting: the summary, the decisions, the action items, and on the right the five things it caught, each waiting for you to press Add. The sidebar says who wrote it. Apple's on-device model. Network: never used.

Both sidesYour microphone on one channel, the call's audio on another. Headphones or not.
Written on this MacTranscript and summary by the speech and language models that ship inside macOS 26.
Network: never usedThe recording, the transcript and the notes stay on your disk. There is no server.
$15, onceNo seat, no meter, no renewal. Two Macs, updates for the life of the app.

How it works

Record. It writes. You press Add.

Three moments, and the only one that asks anything of you is the last.

Press Record. Then forget it.

While the call runs, Minutes shows the elapsed time, a level for you and a level for them, and one line to jot in. No transcript scrolling past your face, no robot announcing itself to the other side.

If a call app grabs your microphone, Minutes switches to the same shared audio path the call is using, so your voice comes through at full strength with the room echo already cancelled. It does this by itself, within seconds.

Minutes while a call is running: a recording dot, 17:50 elapsed, a level meter for You and one for Them, Pause and Stop, the meeting name, and one line to jot in

Real screenshot. Everything Minutes puts on screen while you are talking to somebody.

Stop, and the minutes are written here.

The transcript, the summary, the decisions and the action items are written on your Mac by the models inside macOS. Every line of the summary is tied to words that were actually said, and both sides are kept apart by channel, so nobody's words land under the wrong name.

The meeting takes its name and its attendees from your calendar. Pull the network cable halfway through and it still finishes.

A finished Minutes note: five catches at the top with Add to Calendar and Add to Reminders buttons, then the summary, the decisions and the action items, and the waveform below

Real screenshot of a finished note: what it caught, what was decided, and who owes what.

It catches the promise. You decide.

Say "I'll send it Monday" on a call and Minutes catches it: a reminder, dated, with the sentence it came from quoted underneath. "Thursday at ten" becomes a calendar event. Each one waits with an Add button.

Nothing is written to Calendar or Reminders until you press Add. Dismiss means it never comes back. If the meeting gets moved later in the same call, the pending card updates instead of leaving you with the wrong time.

Fully automatic adding is a setting, and it is off until you turn it on.

A working replica of the catch band. Play the meeting, press Add, press Undo. The app behaves exactly like this.

68 seconds: the meeting, written down on this Mac. Drawn from the real interface.

The privacy claim, stated exactly

There is no server. So there is nothing to trust us about.

Audio is written to your disk. The transcript is produced by macOS on your Mac. The summary is written by a model that ships inside the operating system. Nothing is sent anywhere at any point, online or off, and there is no setting to get wrong.

Network callsOnly these: signing in, starting the free week, confirming the licence every few days, looking for a new version, and the multilingual engine's download if you ask for it. None of them carries audio, a transcript, a note or a file name.
AccountsYour meetings need none, and neither does the download. You sign in only to start the free week or to unlock what you bought, and that account holds the licence, nothing else.
LanguagesThe optional multilingual engine is a one-time download of about 600 MB. After that it runs offline too.
The testUnplug the network before a meeting. Record it. Read the minutes. never left this Mac is what the footer of every note says, and it is literally true.

Where it all lands

A folder of Markdown you own.

No database, no export, no lock-in. Every meeting is one .md file with the summary, the decisions, the catches and the transcript inside it. If you stop using Minutes, every note still opens.

Named by your calendar

Not Recording 47

A recording takes the name of the meeting it belongs to and lists who was there. The attendees' names also teach the transcriber how to spell them.

The library

A date spine with waveforms

Meetings down the left in the order they happened, each with a waveform so you can see where the talking actually was. Search by meeting, person or word.

Layouts

Three ways to read a meeting

Two Lanes, The Record and The Desk lay the same meeting out differently. Pick the one that matches how you read, not a colour scheme.

Languages

Arabic, French, English, mixed

Install the multilingual engine once and saved transcripts hear meetings that switch language mid-sentence, picking the language by themselves, on this Mac.

Vocabulary

Your words, spelled your way

Type the names and terms your meetings contain and the transcriber learns them. It also learns from your own notes. Payoneer stops coming out as Pioneer.

If you run Crest

One tap into your notes

File a summary into Crest's Notes from the notch. No sync, no second account: the two apps talk on your Mac. Minutes works on its own without it.

The comparison

Minutes vs the rest.

The popular meeting notetakers are cloud services: they upload your meeting to their servers, bill you every month, and keep your notes in their app. Minutes took the other road on every row.

Feature	Minutes	Granola	Otter	Fireflies
Price	$15 once	Monthly subscription	Free 300 min, then $8.33 to $30 per user per month	Free, or $10 to $39 per seat per month
On-device transcription	Yes	Cloud	Cloud	Cloud
Works fully offline	Yes	No	No	No
Audio never uploaded	Yes	Uploaded, then deleted	No	No
No bot joins your meeting	Yes	Yes	Optional	Bot joins
Plain Markdown you own	Yes	In their app	In their app	In their app
Action items into Apple Calendar and Reminders	Yes	No	No	No
Your meetings readable without their servers	Yes	No	No	No

Published by the makers of Minutes. The marks reflect each service's own documentation, privacy policy and pricing page as of July 2026. Competitor names are the property of their owners. The longer Granola comparison · vs Otter.ai · vs Fathom · vs Fireflies.ai · vs tl;dv · vs Notion AI · Private, on-device notes · Local AI note takers, compared · Best Mac meeting notes apps in 2026

Pricing

Pay once. Nothing renews.

One price, everything in the app, every future version. Less than one month of most cloud notetakers.

One payment

Minutes

$15 once

The whole notetaker. Recording, transcripts, summaries, catches, every language the engine knows.

2 Macs. Free updates for the life of the app. Tax included, 14-day refund.

Try free for 7 days, no card

What the 7 days include

Everything. The trial is the full app, not a preview of it.
Both sides of every call, transcribed and summarized on your Mac.
Catches you can add to Calendar and Reminders with one press.
The multilingual engine, if you want it, downloaded once.
Plain Markdown in a folder you own, from the first meeting on.
No card. Download it, then sign in inside Minutes to start the week.

Minutes is also part of the Crest suite. Crest, Take and Minutes together are $35, one payment, at crestnotch.app. Everything you own lives at your account. What changed in the last release.

Questions

Good to know.

Does anything leave my Mac?

No. Recording, transcription and summarization all run on your Mac using the models that ship inside macOS. There is no server to send audio to. You can disconnect from the internet during a meeting and everything still works.

How does it hear the other person?

It taps the audio your meeting app plays, digitally, rather than listening through a speaker. Headphones make no difference, and the other side is captured on its own channel so it is never confused with your voice.

Which Macs does Minutes run on?

macOS 26 on Apple Silicon. That is not an arbitrary floor: the transcription and summarization models ship inside that version of the OS, which is exactly why there is nothing to download and nothing to upload. Summaries use Apple Intelligence, so turn it on in System Settings; recording and transcripts work without it.

What languages does it understand?

English out of the box, with Apple's speech engine. Install the multilingual engine from Settings, a one-time download of about 600 MB, and saved transcripts also hear Arabic, French, and meetings that switch language mid-sentence. The engine runs entirely on your Mac.

Where do my notes live?

In one folder of plain Markdown files that you own and can open in any editor. There is no database and no export step. If you stop using Minutes, every note still opens.

Can I try it first?

Yes, 7 days with everything unlocked and no card. The download needs no account: sign in inside Minutes to start the week.

Do I have to tell people I am recording?

That is your call and your local law's. Minutes is built so it is easy to be honest: the recording indicator stays visible the whole time, and it never starts a recording on its own.