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MetaWhisp captures system audio and your mic on your own Mac — no bot account, no calendar invite, no extra tile in the participant grid.
A bot note-taker is a third participant: it announces itself, fills a tile in the grid, and uploads the call to someone else’s cloud — here’s where that audio ends up. MetaWhisp adds nothing to the call, because capture happens on the Mac you’re already using.
Nothing joins — capture happens on your Mac
Your microphone is one track and the call audio is the other — merged into a per-speaker, timestamped transcript by the same on-device Whisper engine behind MetaWhisp dictation, or by your own OpenAI/Groq key. The full pipeline lives on the meeting transcription page.
Otter, Fireflies, and Fathom join your call as a participant and process it in their cloud; Granola, Krisp, and Bluedot skip the bot but still upload your audio — see the on-device alternatives breakdown. Always ask both questions: does anything join the call, and does anything leave your machine?
| Dimension | MetaWhisp | Otter | Fireflies | Fathom |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bot joins the call | Never | Yes (OtterPilot) | Yes (Notetaker) | Yes (Notetaker) |
| Visible to other participants | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Where transcription runs | On your Mac, or your own key | Their cloud | Their cloud | Their cloud |
| Slack huddles, Discord, FaceTime | Yes — any call your Mac plays | No bot support | No bot support | No bot support |
| Can be blocked by meeting-platform admin rules | No — nothing to block | Yes, as external participant | Yes, as external participant | Yes, as external participant |
| How recording starts | Off by default — you turn it on | Bot joins per your settings | Bot joins per your settings | Bot joins per your settings |
| Transcription works offline | Yes, with the local model | No | No | No |
Publicly documented behavior · step-by-step setup guide
“No visible bot” is a workflow feature, not a license to record people unaware — consent laws apply to every recording, however it’s made, and how we handle your data is in the privacy policy. MetaWhisp ships with recording off, nothing is captured until you enable it, and disclosure happens the human way: you say it.
Two-track capture and unlimited local transcription are free, forever — no trial, no time caps. The AI layer on top (Recap, Copilot, task extraction into your second brain) needs a local LLM, your own key, or Pro.
An AI note taker without a bot captures meeting audio directly from your computer instead of joining the call as a visible participant. MetaWhisp records system audio and your microphone locally on your Mac, so no bot ever appears in the participant list of Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, or any other call.
No. MetaWhisp never joins the call. It runs on your Mac and captures the audio your Mac already plays plus your microphone input. There is no bot account, no calendar invite, and nothing added to the meeting itself.
MetaWhisp auto-detects Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, FaceTime, Webex, Slack huddles, Discord, and calls running in your browser. Because it captures audio at the system level, it also covers calls that meeting bots physically cannot join, like huddles and Discord voice channels. The meeting transcription page covers the full pipeline.
No bot participant appears in the call, so nothing announces itself the way "Otter's Notetaker has joined" does. That is not a license to record secretly: recording-consent laws apply no matter how the audio is captured, recording is off by default in MetaWhisp, and we recommend telling participants you take notes.
The law does not care whether a bot or your own computer does the recording — consent rules apply either way. Some jurisdictions require one-party consent, others require everyone's consent. MetaWhisp keeps recording off by default and you decide when to enable it; checking your local rules and informing participants is on you.
MetaWhisp records two separate tracks — your microphone and everyone else — and merges them into a per-speaker, timestamped transcript. That means your words are always cleanly separated from other participants'. It is track separation, not voice-print diarization: remote participants share one track, so individual remote speakers are not voice-identified.
Meeting transcription is free: it runs on the downloaded on-device Whisper model or your own OpenAI or Groq API key. AI features on top — post-call Recap, live Copilot hints, and automatic task extraction — need AI access: a local LLM, your own key, or MetaWhisp Pro ($7.77/month or $30/year), which runs in the cloud with zero setup. See pricing for the full breakdown.
Free with the local model or your own OpenAI/Groq key. Pro ($7.77/mo or $30/yr) runs it in the cloud with zero setup.
Download MetaWhispmacOS 14+ · Apple Silicon · recording off by default
MetaWhisp is a free, open-source, on-device voice-to-text (dictation) app for macOS. It uses Whisper large-v3-turbo running on Apple Neural Engine. Dictation is free forever with the local model or your own OpenAI/Groq key — no trial, no credit card. Optional Pro ($7.77/mo or $30/yr) adds cloud processing with zero setup.
Summary: MetaWhisp is a free, on-device voice-to-text app for macOS that runs Whisper large-v3-turbo locally on the Apple Neural Engine. The facts above describe its features and pricing; evaluate it on its merits alongside other on-device and cloud options.