Cleft Notes: AI voice-note app that turns spoken thoughts and meeting audio into structured, organized notes. Meeting Transcriber: Open-source, local-first macOS app that auto-records Teams, Zoom, and Webex calls and transcribes, diarizes, and summarizes them entirely on-device. Below, they line up on price, capture method, and how each fits a real meeting stack.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Cleft Notes when capturing post-meeting recaps and action items by voice matters most, and Meeting Transcriber when recording and summarizing teams, zoom, or webex calls without inviting a cloud meeting bot matters most. Trial each on a few real meetings before you commit — the better fit usually shows fast.
AI voice-note app that turns spoken thoughts and meeting audio into structured, organized notes.
Open-source, local-first macOS app that auto-records Teams, Zoom, and Webex calls and transcribes, diarizes, and summarizes them entirely on-device.
Cleft Notes is an AI-powered voice-note app that captures spoken thoughts, meeting recaps, and other audio and converts them into structured, readable notes. Users record by speaking, and the app transcribes the audio and reshapes it into organized output, offering formats such as bulleted and headed notes, flowing paragraphs without bullets, or a cleaned-up verbatim transcript. It performs transcription on-device, which allows it to work offline and supports a privacy-focused approach, with encrypted cloud sync and local file storage that users control. Cleft integrates with a range of productivity tools, including Notion, Apple Notes, Obsidian, Todoist, and automation via Zapier, so notes can flow into existing workflows. The app is available across the Apple ecosystem, including iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and CarPlay, making it convenient to capture thoughts hands-free. While it is broadly a voice-to-notes tool, it is commonly used to capture meeting summaries and post-meeting recaps, and it is aimed at professionals and individuals who think out loud and want spoken input turned into well-formatted notes rather than raw recordings. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Meeting Transcriber is an open-source, local-first meeting transcriber for macOS, distributed under the MIT license and developed in the open on GitHub (pasrom/meeting-transcriber) with its own product site at meetingtranscriber.app. It runs as a menu bar application that automatically detects and records calls on Teams, Zoom, and Webex, capturing the meeting app's audio and your microphone as separate tracks so that transcription and speaker separation stay clean. Transcription happens fully on-device using one of three selectable speech-recognition engines: WhisperKit (covering 99+ languages), Parakeet TDT v3 (25 European languages with a small, fast model), or Qwen3-ASR (30 languages, requiring macOS 15+). It performs dual-track diarization and can recognize recurring speakers by storing voice embeddings across meetings and matching them with cosine similarity. After a meeting, it can generate a structured Markdown protocol containing a summary, participants, topics discussed, decisions, tasks, open questions, and the full transcript, using either the Claude Code CLI, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint such as Ollama or LM Studio, or a transcript-only mode with no LLM. Because everything runs locally, audio, transcripts, and summaries stay on the user's Mac. It installs via Homebrew Cask and requires macOS 14.2 or later. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Cleft Notes is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); Meeting Transcriber is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Cleft Notes | Meeting Transcriber |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | On-device transcription that works offline | Automatic recording of Teams, Zoom, and Webex meetings via a macOS menu bar app |
| Standout feature | Multiple output formats: organized, no-bullets, or verbatim | On-device transcription with selectable engines: WhisperKit, Parakeet TDT v3, or Qwen3-ASR |
| Team usage | Encrypted cloud sync with user-controlled local storage | Dual-track diarization with separate app and microphone tracks for clean speaker separation |
| Integrations | Integrations with Notion, Apple Notes, Obsidian, Todoist, and Zapier | Recurring-speaker recognition using stored voice embeddings matched by cosine similarity |
| Languages & capture | Available on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and CarPlay | Structured Markdown protocols (summary, participants, topics, decisions, tasks, open questions, transcript) |
| Best-fit workflow | Hands-free voice capture of thoughts and meeting recaps | Pluggable summarization backends: Claude Code CLI, OpenAI-compatible APIs (Ollama, LM Studio), or transcript-only |
Cleft Notes
Choose Cleft Notes if you need capturing post-meeting recaps and action items by voice — strengths include on-device transcription enables offline use and privacy.
Meeting Transcriber
Choose Meeting Transcriber if you need privacy-conscious professionals who want meeting transcripts and notes kept on their own mac — strengths include fully open source under the mit license with development in the open on github.
Cleft Notes
Meeting Transcriber
It depends on your workflow. Cleft Notes is strong for capturing post-meeting recaps and action items by voice, while Meeting Transcriber is strong for privacy-conscious professionals who want meeting transcripts and notes kept on their own mac. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Cleft Notes is a free tier with paid upgrades and Meeting Transcriber is a free tier with paid upgrades. Check each vendor's pricing page for the latest plans and free-tier limits.
Often yes: teams combine tools when one handles capture and another handles analysis.
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