I built Tironian Notes after realizing that every call I had recorded with cloud-based transcription services was sitting on someone else’s servers. I had no idea who could access it or what might happen to that data later. That led to a simple idea: what if a modern Mac were capable of handling transcription locally instead of relying on cloud services? Tironian Notes records audio, transcribes it with Whisper, identifies speakers, and generates LLM-powered summaries, all directly on your Mac. Nothing is sent anywhere. The name comes from Tiro, Cicero’s secretary, who invented classical shorthand in 63 BC. The challenge of accurately capturing speech hasn’t really changed over the centuries, only the tools have. Happy to answer any questions about how it works, why I made certain design decisions, or what’s coming next. And if you try it, let me know how your first transcript goes.

Tironian Notes

Free meeting recorder and transcriber for Mac. No cloud.

Free meeting recorder and transcriber for Mac. No cloud.