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, so their side arrives clean whether you wear headphones or not. On a speaker call their voice also carries back into your microphone. Minutes measures that echo, subtracts it, and re-reads your own channel before it writes the transcript, so their words do not end up under your name. Headphones are still the cleanest separation, and when a call needed them Minutes says so on the note.

Which Macs does Minutes run on?

macOS 26 or later 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.

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

Can I buy Minutes on its own?

No. Minutes comes with Crest: $24.99 once buys Crest Pro, Take and Minutes, three licences on one account, two Macs each. Own Crest Pro already? Sign in and add Take and Minutes for $5. Or subscribe to all three for $2.99 a month or $14.99 a year.

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.

Minutes

Any call, written down.

No bot joins the call.
The audio never leaves your Mac.

Try free for 7 days Buy all three apps for $24.99

macOS 26 or later, on Apple Silicon. Crest Pro and Take come with it.

The Minutes window: the meetings by date down the left, and the open note, Crest launch sync, with three catches at the top, one already added, then the summary, the decisions, the action items and both sides of the script.

Record. Stop. Press Add.

Only the last step asks anything of you.

The top of a Minutes note, Crest launch sync: three catches, a reminder with Add to Reminders, one already added with Undo, and a meeting with Add to Calendar.

Both sides of any call.

Zoom, Meet, Teams or FaceTime. Your voice and theirs, kept apart.

The script of a call in two lanes: the other side on the left, you on the right, each line with its time.

It hears French. And Arabic.

Add the multilingual engine once. It runs on your Mac.

A meeting in French and English: Camille's lines in French on the left, yours in English on the right.

French with English, in one meeting.

Every meeting. Everyone in it.

Find a call by its day, or by who was on it.

The Meetings list: today, Friday and Thursday, each meeting with its start time, its length, who was there and a line showing when each side spoke.

Newest first, each showing when you and they spoke.

There is no server.

So there is nothing to trust us about.

The foot of a Minutes note: the recording's waveform, and the file it lives in, 2026-09-25 1000 Crest launch sync.md, never left this Mac.

What goes online: your sign-in, the free week or a purchase, a licence check every few days, updates, and the language engine if you ask for it. None of it carries audio, a transcript, a note or a file name.

A folder of Markdown you own.

No database, no export, no lock-in.

One file per meeting.The summary, the decisions, the catches and the transcript, in one .md file.

Named by your calendar.Each recording takes its meeting's name and who was there.

Your words, spelled your way.Type the names and terms you use, and it spells them your way more often.

Into Crest's notes.Send a finished meeting's summary to Crest. No sync, no second account.

Stop using Minutes, and every note still opens.

Your review goes here.

Good or bad, we read each one before it goes up.

Minutes comes with Crest.

All three apps, bought once. Or subscribe, if you prefer.

No card needed

Try Minutes

Free for 7 days

Everything, unlocked
The multilingual engine, if you want it
Plain Markdown from the first meeting
Sign in inside Minutes to start the week

Download

macOS 26 or later, on Apple Silicon.

Buy once

Everything

$24.99 once

Minutes, the whole notetaker
Crest Pro, in the notch
Take, the screen recorder
Own Crest Pro already? Add both for $5

Buy all three apps

Minutes needs macOS 26 or later, on Apple Silicon.

Prefer a subscription? All three for $2.99 a month

Two Macs per licence.Prices in USD, tax included.7-day refunds.Card, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay or crypto.Everything you own lives at your account.

The details, if you want them.

Minutes against the cloud notetakers

The popular AI note takers 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	$24.99 once, with Crest, or $2.99 a month	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, vs Apple's built-in recording, Private, on-device notes, Local AI note takers, compared, Best Mac meeting notes apps in 2026.

Questions

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, so their side arrives clean whether you wear headphones or not. On a speaker call their voice also carries back into your microphone. Minutes measures that echo, subtracts it, and re-reads your own channel before it writes the transcript, so their words do not end up under your name. Headphones are still the cleanest separation, and when an echo could not be taken out, Minutes says so as it finishes.
Which Macs does Minutes run on?: macOS 26 or later 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.
Can I buy Minutes on its own?: No. Minutes comes with Crest: $24.99 once buys Crest Pro, Take and Minutes, three licences on one account, two Macs each. Own Crest Pro already? Sign in and add Take and Minutes for $5. Or subscribe to all three for $2.99 a month or $14.99 a year.
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.

How it works, in detail

Any call, both sides: Zoom, Meet, Teams, FaceTime or anything that plays sound, as host or guest. Your microphone on one channel, the call on another. Headphones or not: with AirPods or other Bluetooth headphones, Minutes records from the Mac's own mic so the headphones keep full sound.
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.
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 decision and action item has to come with words that were actually said, or it is left out, and both sides are kept apart by channel. On a speaker call, where their voice carries back into your microphone, Minutes subtracts the echo and re-reads your 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.
It catches the promise. You decide.: Say "I'll send it Monday" on a call and Minutes catches it: a reminder, due on the day that was said. "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.

The privacy claim, stated exactly

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. None of it is sent anywhere, online or off, and there is no setting to get wrong.

Network calls: Minutes goes online to sign you in, start the free week or a purchase, check the licence every few days and look for a new version, and to download the multilingual engine if you ask for it. Update checks carry an anonymous install count, which you can turn off. None of it carries audio, a transcript, a note or a file name.
Accounts: Your 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.
Languages: The optional multilingual engine is a one-time download of about 600 MB. After that it runs offline too.
The test: Unplug 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.

Every service the apps reach is listed on the privacy page.

Where it all lands

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: Start a recording in Minutes during a calendar event and it takes the meeting's name and lists who was there. The attendees' names also help the transcriber spell them.
A date spine: Meetings under dated headers, newest first, and in the default look each row shows when you and they spoke. Search by meeting, person or word.
Three ways to read a meeting: Two Lanes, The Record and The Desk lay out the same meeting differently. Switch any time in Settings; your files never change.
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.
Your words, spelled your way: Type the names and terms your meetings contain and the transcriber takes them as hints, along with the names in your calendar and in your own notes.
If you run Crest: When Crest is on your Mac, Minutes can send a finished meeting's name and summary to Crest's Notes. No sync, no second account: the two apps talk on your Mac. Crest can also start, pause and stop a recording from the notch. Minutes works on its own without it.

Tech specs

Works on: macOS 26 or later on Apple Silicon. The transcription and summary models ship inside that version of macOS. Summaries and catches use Apple Intelligence; recording and transcripts work without it.
Languages: English out of the box. The multilingual engine, one download of about 600 MB, adds Arabic, French and mixed meetings to saved transcripts.
Your notes: Plain Markdown files in a folder you own, one per meeting, with its audio beside it.
Price: Minutes comes with Crest: $24.99 once buys Crest Pro, Take and Minutes, two Macs each, with updates through Crest 7. Or subscribe for $2.99 a month, with every update while it runs. Take runs on macOS 14 or later, on any Mac.
Install: Signed and notarized by Apple. What changed in the last release.
Pictures: A finished meeting, full size, and a finished note. From July, before the Minutes 2 design: the recording strip.