Description
Taking notes while you listen means half-listening. A three-hour lecture recording is something you'll never replay. And the AI meeting-note apps want a monthly subscription plus your audio on their servers, which rules them out for anything confidential.
Earnote keeps the whole job on your Mac. It records meetings, calls and lectures, and both transcription and the AI summary run locally by default: its own on-device model is one download, then free, private and offline, and the audio never leaves the machine. You get a structured note with the tasks pulled out, sent straight to Notion, Obsidian or Apple Notes.
Students get extras: lectures become question-and-answer flashcards you can export to Anki, and every lecture of a subject rolls up into a semester overview with the common thread and exam hints. It's free, MIT-licensed and needs no account; it runs on Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 15 or later.
Records both sides: captures your mic and system audio together, so everyone else in Zoom, Teams or Meet is on the recording, with no BlackHole or other virtual audio device.
Call detection: when Zoom, Teams, FaceTime, Slack or a browser call grabs the mic, a small pop-up offers to record, and it can stop on its own when the call ends.
Me vs. others: compares mic and system audio to label each segment by who spoke.
Your choice of AI: six local models from 1 GB to 17 GB, with the right one preselected for your Mac's memory, or Apple Intelligence, Ollama, LM Studio, Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, or your existing Claude Code / Codex subscription. It tells you whenever text is going to the cloud.
Built for long sessions: audio is processed in chunks and long transcripts are summarized map-reduce style, so a 3-hour lecture comes out whole.
Categories with their own rules: lecture, client call, interview, each with its own icon, summary instructions and export targets.
Clickable timestamps: a player bar sits under every note, every timestamp jumps to that moment, and ⌘3 shows note and transcript side by side with the transcript following playback.
Tasks where you keep them: action items land in Apple Reminders, Things or Todoist.
Global shortcut and menu bar: ⌃⌥⌘R starts or stops a recording from any app, and ⇧⌘P pauses for off-the-record moments; nothing is saved while paused.
Import and search: drop an existing audio file in to transcribe it, then search across every transcript.
Explain it simply: one switch makes the AI write short sentences and explain technical terms, handy for a subject you're new to.
Earnote keeps the whole job on your Mac. It records meetings, calls and lectures, and both transcription and the AI summary run locally by default: its own on-device model is one download, then free, private and offline, and the audio never leaves the machine. You get a structured note with the tasks pulled out, sent straight to Notion, Obsidian or Apple Notes.
Students get extras: lectures become question-and-answer flashcards you can export to Anki, and every lecture of a subject rolls up into a semester overview with the common thread and exam hints. It's free, MIT-licensed and needs no account; it runs on Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 15 or later.
Features
Records both sides: captures your mic and system audio together, so everyone else in Zoom, Teams or Meet is on the recording, with no BlackHole or other virtual audio device.
Call detection: when Zoom, Teams, FaceTime, Slack or a browser call grabs the mic, a small pop-up offers to record, and it can stop on its own when the call ends.
Me vs. others: compares mic and system audio to label each segment by who spoke.
Your choice of AI: six local models from 1 GB to 17 GB, with the right one preselected for your Mac's memory, or Apple Intelligence, Ollama, LM Studio, Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, or your existing Claude Code / Codex subscription. It tells you whenever text is going to the cloud.
Built for long sessions: audio is processed in chunks and long transcripts are summarized map-reduce style, so a 3-hour lecture comes out whole.
Categories with their own rules: lecture, client call, interview, each with its own icon, summary instructions and export targets.
Clickable timestamps: a player bar sits under every note, every timestamp jumps to that moment, and ⌘3 shows note and transcript side by side with the transcript following playback.
Tasks where you keep them: action items land in Apple Reminders, Things or Todoist.
Global shortcut and menu bar: ⌃⌥⌘R starts or stops a recording from any app, and ⇧⌘P pauses for off-the-record moments; nothing is saved while paused.
Import and search: drop an existing audio file in to transcribe it, then search across every transcript.
Explain it simply: one switch makes the AI write short sentences and explain technical terms, handy for a subject you're new to.
