Live transcription, named speakers, finished notes. Run all of it locally, including the AI.
The Noats app recording a meeting: the cursor opens a note, expands the collapsed transport into the live transcript panel, which streams named speakers Nina Calder and Gareth Pike, then the rough notes become a structured write-up.
Rough notes, written up.
Type what matters and Noats writes it up. Your rough note stays as its own version, one click away.
Small things keep the day moving.
The parts you touch every day: the alert before a call, search that reaches into transcripts, dictation in any text field.
Ask a meeting anything.
Chat has that meeting's transcript and your notes in front of it, and searches the rest of it when the call runs long.
Dictate anywhere.
Speak into any text field. Auto cleanup takes out the ums and fixes the punctuation, then the sentence lands at your cursor.
Catch the next call.
The meeting alert lands when your call starts, then gets out of the way.
Find anything. Run anything.
Command K searches every note and transcript, and runs the app's commands with their shortcuts beside them.
Make folders, keep the week tidy.
Name a folder, give it a colour or an emoji, and drag notes in from the list.
Bring your Granola notes.
Import the meetings Granola has already written up. Notes, transcripts, attendees, and folders come over and are searchable in Noats.
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Recording a call
No bot ever joins. Noats records from your desktop, so nothing shows up in the participant list.
No echo, no headphones. Echo cancellation and noise suppression run on-device, so you can talk over the speaker.
Pull your AirPods out mid-call. If the microphone disappears, capture rebuilds on whatever is left and keeps going.
Record for as long as the call runs. There is no length limit, and a crash keeps whatever already reached the disk.
It says so when it cannot hear. A notice appears for a real failure, never because you went quiet for a while.
You always know it is on. A menu-bar dot and timer run for every second of a meeting.
A recorder that keeps out of the way. A small floating pill shows the level. Hover it for the live transcript.
Before you start
Noats notices the meeting. It watches which app takes the microphone. No calendar, no invite, no bot.
It knows where meetings happen. Zoom, Teams, Webex, GoToMeeting, FaceTime, Slack and Discord, plus the browsers, which is what covers Google Meet.
Add the app you actually use. Pick any app on your Mac and Noats will watch that one too.
Nothing records itself. The alert only offers. Recording starts when you make the note, in one click.
Voices
The far side splits itself. Separate voices on the other end of the call, worked out on your Mac.
Fix a split voice in one click. Merge two speakers and every line follows. Undo it just as fast.
Tune how readily voices split. Fewer, balanced or more, for rooms that split too eagerly or not enough.
Who talked, and for how long. Talk time sits on every name, yours included.
It admits when it is unsure. A low-confidence match reads muted rather than pretending to be certain.
Find the meeting by who was in it. Names you have given a speaker are searchable across every note.
The transcript
Words as you speak, then better words. A fast pass puts the sentence on screen; a second model settles the punctuation.
Every word carries its timestamp. Click a line to hear that moment back.
Search inside one meeting. Step through every match without leaving the note.
A plain file on your disk. Each session is an append-only log you can read without Noats.
Keep it on top of everything. One shortcut floats the live transcript over whatever you are working in.
The write-up
It starts itself when you stop. The write-up begins the moment a recording finishes. No button.
Six templates, or your own. Auto, 1:1, Sales call, User research, Standup, Interview. Duplicate any to change it.
Every block shows its work. Click a block to see the transcript lines behind it.
Your rough note is never overwritten. The write-up arrives as a second version, one tab away from what you typed.
It titles the note, unless you did. A title you wrote yourself is kept, and used as a hint rather than replaced.
Ask a meeting anything. Chat has that meeting in front of it, and its answers link back to the lines they came from.
Dictation
Tap the Globe key and talk. Text lands at your cursor in any app. Tap again to stop, or switch it to hold or double tap.
Cleanup with a dial, not a switch. Off, light, medium or high. Light takes out the ums and fixes the punctuation.
It writes like the app you are in. A chat message in Slack, full sentences in Mail.
It never rewrites your code. In an editor or a terminal the cleanup pass is skipped and you get exactly what you said.
Teach it your words. A personal dictionary fixes product names, and keeps fixing them when cleanup is off.
It can learn your corrections. Fix a word by hand and Noats offers to remember it. Off until you turn it on.
Your clipboard survives. Whatever you had copied is put back the moment the text lands.
Every take is kept. The history holds the audio, the raw transcript and the cleaned-up text.
Finding things
Search what was said. One ranked list across your notes and every transcript.
Land on the exact second. A transcript result opens the note and flashes the line it found.
Command K runs the app. Every command in one place, with its shortcut beside it.
Find and replace in a note. A match count, step through, and replace one or all of them.
Notes and folders
Checklists, tables and images. Markdown in and markdown out, including what you paste.
Folders with a colour and an emoji. The whole emoji set is bundled, so the picker works with the network off.
Drag notes in from the list. Select a batch and file the lot in one go.
Nothing to save. Edits are written as you stop typing, and again when you navigate away.
Where the AI runs
On your Mac by default. Noats downloads and serves its own model, on a local port nothing else can reach.
Four local models, sized to your Mac. Qwen3 in three sizes and Granite 4 Micro, each with an honest memory figure.
Every download is checksummed. Verified against a pinned hash, and it resumes where it stopped.
Bring the ChatGPT plan you pay for. Through OpenAI's own Codex CLI, signed in on your machine. Noats never sees the login.
Or a key, or your own server. Anthropic, OpenAI and OpenRouter keys, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint — Ollama and LM Studio included.
Keys live in the Keychain. Encrypted at rest and decrypted only for the request that needs them.
Your data
One folder on your Mac. A SQLite database and plain audio files, in your own Application Support folder.
Delete means gone. Files removed, the search index recounted, and the result checked on disk afterwards.
Keep things only as long as you want. Separate rules for recordings, transcripts and notes. Everything is kept until you say otherwise.
One switch stops everything. Pause all capture, and it stays paused through a restart.
Exclude an app entirely. Noats will not react to it, whatever else is switched on.
No analytics, no telemetry. Nothing is collected, so there is nothing to opt out of.
Export to Obsidian-ready markdown. With the transcript attached, if you want it there.
Bring your Granola notes. Notes, transcripts, attendees and folders, searchable the moment they arrive.
Run a local model. Or connect one you already use.
Run one on your Mac, use the ChatGPT plan you already pay for, connect a provider key, or point Noats at a server you already run.
How it compares.
Familiar tools, different place of work. Cloud notetakers process your calls on their servers; Noats can do it on your Mac.
| Capability | Noats | Granola | Otter | Fireflies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Works offline after one download | Yes | No | No | No |
| Transcription on your device | Yes | No | No | No |
| No bot joins your call | Yes | Yes | Bot | Bot |
| Runs on your ChatGPT plan1 | Yes | No | No | No |
| Notes older than 30 days, free | Yes | Paid | Limited | Limited |
- 1Through OpenAI’s Codex CLI, signed in on your machine. Noats never sees the login.
- Checked against each product’s published materials, July 2026.
Frequently asked.
How is it different from Granola?
The shape is familiar on purpose. What changes is where the work happens: the transcript, the speaker separation, and the model all run on your machine. See the comparison.
Does it really work offline?
Yes, after a one-time download. Speech, speaker separation, and the local models fetch on first run, then transcription, diarization, and enhancement never touch the network. The app does check for updates, and you can turn that off.
Where does my data live?
A SQLite database and audio files in your own Application Support folder. Deletion is verified on disk, not soft-deleted.
How does the ChatGPT subscription work?
If you already use OpenAI's Codex CLI, Noats picks up that session and writes notes on your ChatGPT plan. You sign in with OpenAI in your terminal, so your login never passes through Noats. Anthropic, OpenAI, and OpenRouter API keys work too, or point it at your own server.
Can it tell speakers apart?
Anything coming through your Mac's audio is split by voice, even two people on one microphone at the far end of a call, and you can name each one. Your own mic is the exception: everything it hears is you, so an in-person meeting on one mic stays one speaker.
What does it cost?
Noats is free during beta. We expect to keep a free version for good. There is no 30-day paywall on your old notes.
Can I get my notes back out?
Any note exports as plain markdown with a keystroke. Everything else is a SQLite file and plain audio in your own folder.
Can I bring my Granola notes?
Yes. Meetings Granola has already processed can be imported with their notes, transcripts, attendees, and folders. Granola's API does not currently include unfinished meetings or audio, so imported meetings will not have audio replay.
Join the Noats beta.
Live transcripts and useful notes, stored on your Mac.
Free during beta. We expect to keep a free version for good.


