Call transcripts, right on your Mac

Hey, after every call you’ve got the minutes ready — with names, who said what. Are you typing all that up by hand?

No, that’s VoiceGrep. It sits in the menu bar and notices on its own when a call starts — I don’t press a thing.

Hold on. “Turns into text” — where, exactly? These are client calls. We can’t hand them over to someone else’s cloud.

They’re not handed over anywhere. Recording, transcription and voice recognition all run on the device. That’s not a checkbox you could untick by accident — it’s how the app is built.

Does it need the internet?

Once — to download the speech model, about 0.6–1 GB. After that it all works offline. The network is only for updates, and for an external LLM if you turn one on with your own key.

Does it handle English? Most of our calls are in English.

Yes — English and Russian. Russian is the default, so switch the meeting language to English in Settings, or let it auto-detect. Heads-up: the interface itself is in Russian for now, and so are summaries and tasks — though the assistant can answer in English.

Wait, how does it tell my voice from yours?

You’re the microphone, so it labels you “Me”. Everyone else it tells apart by voice: name someone once, their voiceprint is saved, and from then on they’re labeled automatically in every meeting. It already knows Olivia from earlier calls. Me it doesn’t know yet — name me, there’s a button above, and watch what happens to the lines.See — my name is already on every line, above and below.

What if calls run back to back? Some days I have five in a row.

It splits them into separate meetings on its own. And when it records automatically, it captures only the call app’s audio — notifications, music and random pings from other apps stay out.

What permissions does it ask for? Screen Recording makes me nervous.

Microphone and Screen Recording. Screen Recording is just how macOS lets it capture the call’s system audio — no screen video is ever saved.

Okay, so it’s recorded. Then what? Nobody rereads transcripts.

You don’t reread them. Each meeting has search, and for the whole archive there’s the assistant: ask “what did we agree with Sam?” or “what are my tasks?” — it searches the transcripts itself, even by sound, and answers with links back to the conversations. The assistant needs an external LLM on your own key — that’s opt-in.

Does it do summaries and tasks too?

If you connect an LLM with your own key — yes: a short summary and tasks with owners. It only suggests tasks; you confirm the ones you want. There’s also a card for every person — role, company, notes — and a graph of who meets with whom.

Can I mark something during the call? An important moment, say.

There’s a floating panel you can turn on in Settings: a timer, marks — important, question, task, decision — and screenshots. Everything is pinned to its moment in the conversation. Try it — the mark lands right on the timeline.

And if the Mac crashes in the middle of a call?

The meeting exists from the first second of recording. After a crash, the recording is recovered and transcribed. And it backs up its database regularly on its own.

What about recordings I already have?

Sure — import an existing recording, audio or video, and it’s transcribed the same way, with names, a summary and tasks. You can export any meeting to Markdown, and move voiceprints to another Mac of yours.

Sold. How do I install it?

Download it and drag it into Applications. It isn’t notarized by Apple yet, so you clear the quarantine once in Terminal — after that it updates itself.

Which Mac do I need?

Apple Silicon — M1 or later, on macOS 14.4 or newer. It’s about 23 MB. And it’s free.

Done — installing it.