Open source
Read every line, build it yourself with Xcode, or fork it. Based on the original Better Meeting project.
Apache License 2.0
Open source · Fully local · Swift-native
Record the meeting. Transcribe it on your Mac.
Better Meeting is a lightweight menu bar app that records your screen, system audio, and microphone, then transcribes everything on-device. No account. No upload. No cloud processing.
Apple silicon
macOS 15 or later
Apache-2.0
The Better Meeting menu, shown with sample meetings.
Why Better Meeting
Small, private, and made for the Mac.
Lightweight
Lives in the menu bar, with no Dock icon and no main window. The speech model downloads once, when it's first needed.
~11 MB app downloadFully local
Recording, transcription, screen text, and meeting titles are all processed on your Mac, and it works offline once set up.
No account · No uploadSwift-native
Built with SwiftUI, ScreenCaptureKit, Core ML, Vision, and NaturalLanguage. No Electron, no bundled browser.
Apple silicon · macOS 15+
How it works
From the menu bar to a searchable transcript.
No setup ceremony. Pick a display and microphone once, and every meeting after that is one click.
Record
Click Start recording for screen video, system audio, and microphone. For no video, open its arrow and choose Record audio-only. Live meters show both audio sources.
Transcribe
When you stop, the audio is transcribed on-device with Parakeet or Whisper, with optional speaker labels. You can start the next recording while it works.
Revisit
Meetings are listed by day. Search matches titles and everything that was said. Click a meeting to open its transcript.
Plain files, no lock-in
Every meeting is a folder you own.
Video, audio, a Markdown transcript, and JSON with timings, languages, and speakers, saved to ~/Documents/Better Meetings.
- Open formats. Edit the transcript in any editor, and search still finds your changes.
- Export bundles. Adds up to 30 screenshots, on-screen text read with Apple's Vision framework, and a combined timeline.
- Bring your own assistant. Each bundle includes a
PROMPT.md. There's no LLM inside Better Meeting, and nothing is sent anywhere.
Transcription
Two on-device engines. Pick the one that fits.
Both run with Core ML on Apple silicon. Models download once from Hugging Face and then work offline.
Parakeet v3
DefaultOne fast pass with automatic language detection and punctuation.
- Languages25 European languages, including Ukrainian, Russian, and English
- PassesOne pass over the whole recording
- ModelAbout 470 MB, downloaded once
Runs through FluidAudio · Model weights CC-BY-4.0, © NVIDIA
Whisper
Most languagesFor every other language, and for meetings that switch between them.
- LanguagesEvery language WhisperKit lists
- PassesOne per selected language, merged by confidence, with a silence filter
- ModelsSmall, Large v3 Turbo (about 1.6 GB), or Large v3, plus vocabulary hints and tunable decoding
Runs through WhisperKit by Argmax
Speaker labels
Optional. SpeakerKit tells voices apart on your Mac and labels each transcript segment. It adds about 11 MB of models and some processing time.
In the details
Keep the recording. Recover the transcript.
Calendar-aware
Shows today's meetings from Calendar, with a button that records and names the next one. Reads events and never edits them. Off by default.
Detect meetings
Once another app has used the microphone for half a minute, you get a notification offering to record. Nothing is recorded until you click.
Silence warning
If no audio arrives from either source within 30 seconds, an amber warning appears while there's still time to fix the input.
Resumable
Whisper reuses finished language passes. Parakeet restarts its single pass. Both can retry from a saved recording after a restart; force quit or power loss can leave an unreadable video.
Automatic titles
Unnamed meetings get a title like “Anna — Pricing Review”, found on-device with Apple's NaturalLanguage framework, or from repeated names and topics in languages it cannot tag, such as Ukrainian.
Verified updates
Sparkle checks GitHub and verifies each update before installing it. Automatic downloads and the beta channel are both opt-in.
Privacy
What stays on your Mac, and what doesn't.
Your meetings never leave the Mac unless you move them. The network is used for exactly two things.
On your Mac
- Screen, system audio, and microphone recordingsLocal
- Transcripts and speaker labelsLocal
- Screenshots and on-screen textLocal
- Meeting titles and searchLocal
- Calendar event detailsLocal
Over the network
- Update checksGitHub
- Speech models, once per modelHugging Face
That's the full list. Better Meeting has no analytics or telemetry and doesn't use an account.
Install
Ready in a minute, with Homebrew.
Paste the commands below into Terminal. The cask downloads the release from GitHub and verifies its SHA-256 checksum. Xcode isn't required.
Install
Add the Better Meeting tap, install the cask, and open the app. Its icon appears in the menu bar.
# Add the tap and install the app $ brew tap --custom-remote kremnyi/better-meeting https://github.com/kremnyi/better-meeting-menubar $ brew install --cask kremnyi/better-meeting/better-meeting # Open it from Applications $ open -a "Better Meeting"
Staying current. The app can update itself from Options → App & updates. With Homebrew, quit the app and run brew upgrade --cask kremnyi/.
Before you install
You'll need Homebrew and:
- Apple silicon Mac
- macOS 15 Sequoia or later
- ~470 MB for Parakeet; Whisper models range from ~490 MB to 3.1 GB. Installed models add up.
The app is self-signed and not notarized by Apple. If macOS blocks the first launch, open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway. Managed Macs may not allow this.
Video or audio-onlyThe main button records one whole display and audio. Its arrow offers Record audio-only, which starts immediately with the same meeting details. Screen recording stays the default. Window-only capture isn't available.
No built-in AINo summaries or chat. Export a bundle and use the assistant you trust.
After the callTranscripts are made after recording stops. There are no live captions.
One job at a timeTranscriptions queue up, and recording stays available while they run.
Your meetings, on your Mac.
Free and open source. Read the code, file an issue, or send a pull request.