How Notetaker works
What Epilude captures during a meeting, where transcription runs, and where your transcripts, summaries, and recordings are stored.
Notetaker records a meeting on your Mac and turns it into a transcript, a summary, and action items. No bot joins the call: Epilude captures the audio on your side.
What Epilude captures
Epilude records two audio streams: your microphone, and the meeting audio your Mac plays (the other participants in a call). The transcript separates the two, labeling your side Me and the other side Them. All remote participants appear together as Them.
The transcript builds live while the meeting runs, so you can glance at it at any time. Because the microphone is one of the streams, Notetaker also works for in-person conversations: put your Mac on the table and record.
What happens when you stop
Stopping a recording finishes the transcript. To get the summary, press Generate notes on the meeting. Epilude classifies the kind of meeting automatically (a standup, a 1:1, an interview, a sales call, and other common types) and produces an overview, key topics, decisions, open questions, and action items. Points in the summary reference the transcript moments they came from.
If you move on to something else while notes are generating, a floating card announces "Your summary is ready", and View summary opens the meeting. See Summaries and action items for what the summary contains and how to edit it.
Where meetings are processed
By default, Notetaker transcribes in Epilude's cloud through your Epilude account. The audio is processed for transcription and not stored on Epilude's servers, and an internet connection is required while recording.
On Apple Silicon Macs you can switch Settings → Notetaker → Transcription to Local (Parakeet) instead. The meeting is then transcribed on your Mac, the audio never leaves it, and recording works offline.
Summaries and action items are generated in Epilude's cloud in both cases. Creating them sends the transcript text, not the audio, to Epilude.
Local Mode and meetings
Recordings started in Local Mode always use on-device transcription, and the audio never leaves your Mac. Summaries have no on-device version yet, so when you choose Generate notes the finished transcript text is sent to Epilude's cloud to be written up. The recording itself is never sent. To keep the transcript on your Mac too, switch off Cloud assist in Settings → General. The transcript is still saved and still readable, and only the summary step pauses.
What language your notes use
Transcripts and summaries follow the Main language picker in Settings → General → Language. There is no per-meeting language detection, so set the language before recording a meeting held in another one.
Where your notes live
Everything you keep is stored on your Mac. Meetings live in a searchable library inside Epilude, and each meeting also saves as a Markdown file in ~/Documents/Epilude Notes or a folder you choose. See Export and auto-save.
Audio recordings are saved only if you turn on Save audio recordings in Settings → Notetaker. The toggle is off by default, so Epilude keeps the notes, not the audio. Deleting a meeting removes it, and any saved audio, from your Mac.
What you need
- Microphone permission, to record your side of the meeting
- Screen Recording permission, to capture the meeting audio your Mac plays
- Accessibility permission, so Epilude can notice when a meeting app starts
- An internet connection while recording with cloud transcription. Local transcription works offline.
- An Epilude subscription for cloud transcription and summaries. On the Pay Once plan, meetings record with Local transcription and you keep the full transcript; summaries need a subscription.
Grant the permissions in System Settings → Privacy & Security.