Free & open source · for Mac

Meeting minutes,
written on
your Mac

Captures any call, transcribes it on your Mac and writes the minutes: decisions, tasks and open questions. No bot, no cloud, no account.

Get Vauta for free How it works
  • macOS 26+
  • Apple silicon
  • Apache-2.0
  • v0.9.3 public beta

01

Captures both
sides of the call

Your microphone is captured as Me and the call audio as Others. Works with any app; no bot joins the call.

  • Zoom
  • Teams
  • Meet
  • FaceTime
  • Slack
  • Webex

Offers a notice to paste in the chat, so participants know.

Captures all system audio; tested in real calls in Safari so far.

02

Transcribes and
writes the minutes

Transcribed on your Mac, speaker by speaker. The minutes list decisions, tasks with owner and date, and open questions.

Every item has a source. Each decision and task quotes the transcript; anything it cannot back is marked unconfirmed.

03

Stores everything
encrypted

Audio is never saved. Transcripts and minutes are encrypted, and the key stays in your Keychain.

  • 0 saudio on disk
  • AES-256encrypted store
  • Touch IDto open your meetings
  • Noaccount or telemetry
  • 90 daysthen transcripts are deleted; you choose how long to keep the minutes

Features

From the call to the minutes
All on your Mac

Real-time translation

Subtitles of what the other participants say, translated into your language as they speak.

Speaker identification

Tells voices apart automatically. Name a speaker once and the transcript and minutes use that name.

Notes from your shorthand

Type a few words during the call. Vauta writes the full note from what was said, with citations.

Multilingual transcription

Every language Apple’s speech recognition supports. Minutes in the meeting’s language or yours.

Export and import

Minutes and transcripts as Markdown, PDF, subtitles or JSON. Import audio or video recordings as meetings.

Choice of AI model

Apple Intelligence on your Mac, or your own model server at home or at work. Servers on the internet are refused.

Connected memory

Every meeting and document, connected
Ask once and Vauta searches them all

The search model is optional: 574 MB, downloaded only when you choose. Without it, Ask searches by keywords.

The app

A native menu-bar app
Start and stop from the menu bar

The Meetings window showing the minutes of a sample meeting: summary, topics, decisions and open questions.
The menu-bar panel while recording: timer, audio levels for you and the others, quick notes and live notes.

Real screenshots with invented sample meetings. Native Swift and SwiftUI.

Benchmarks

Measured on an Apple M2
Method and limits published

158×

faster than real time at telling speakers apart

110×

faster than real time, transcribing on device

Recorded test files on an M2

9.5%

speaker error rate (DER)

19 held-out English recordings

7.6%

word error rate in Spanish

Read speech, not conversation

1

network code path

Every request goes through it; a test enforces it

0

seconds of audio written to disk

Audio is transcribed in memory, then discarded

Apple M2 · public corpora, not real calls · How we measured

Apple M2, 24 GB, macOS 27, release build. Public corpora (AMI meetings, VoxConverse, Spanish parliament speech and audiobooks) built to resemble one side of a call — not real calls. Speaker figures score the remote speakers’ speech with a 0.25 s collar; settings were tuned on 18 other recordings (9.4% there). Method and limits →

Comparison

Vauta vs. the alternatives
They transcribe in the cloud, Vauta on your Mac

Sends your call’s audio to OpenAI to transcribe it, and needs a paid plan.

Vauta is ahead on 6 of 9 · level on 3

Meeting notes cost (Vauta ahead)

Vauta: Free

ChatGPT: Paid plan (Meetings: Pro or Business)

Open source (Vauta ahead)

Vauta: Yes, Apache-2.0

ChatGPT: No

Where your call is transcribed (Vauta ahead)

Vauta: On your Mac

ChatGPT: OpenAI’s cloud

Account (Vauta ahead)

Vauta: None

ChatGPT: OpenAI account

Run the AI on your own hardware (Vauta ahead)

Vauta: Yes: your Mac or your own server

ChatGPT: No

Your meetings train their AI (Vauta ahead)

Vauta: Never: nothing leaves your Mac or network

ChatGPT: Depends on your plan and settings

A bot in your call (Level)

Vauta: Never

ChatGPT: No bot

Works with (Level)

Vauta: Any call app on your Mac

ChatGPT: Any app, from its Mac app

Runs on (Level)

Vauta: Mac with Apple silicon

ChatGPT: Mac app only

Sources · ChatGPT: Meetings plugin · Record · Data controls

Full comparisons: ChatGPT · Gemini · Teams · Zoom · Otter · Fireflies · Granola · MacWhisper

Vendors’ public docs on 27–28 October 2026, for the feature named and its default settings. Plans change — check their sites. Names are trademarks of their owners; Vauta is not affiliated. Spotted an error?

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Does Vauta send my meetings to the cloud?

No. Vauta transcribes on your Mac with Apple’s speech recognition. The minutes are written by Apple Intelligence on your Mac, or by a model server you run on your Mac or your local network; servers on the internet are refused. The internet is used only to download a model, when you start the download.

Does a bot join my calls?

No. Vauta captures the audio on your Mac: your microphone as Me and the call audio as Others. It offers a notice to paste in the chat so participants know they are being transcribed.

Which Macs and call apps does it work with?

Macs with Apple silicon and macOS 26 or later. It captures any call app on the Mac, such as Zoom, Teams, Meet, FaceTime, Slack or Webex; so far it has been tested in real calls in Safari.

Is the audio recorded?

No. The audio is transcribed in memory and discarded. Transcripts and minutes are stored encrypted (AES-256) with the key in your Keychain, and transcripts are deleted after 90 days.

Which languages does it support?

Every language Apple’s speech recognition supports on your macOS. Minutes are written in the meeting’s language or yours, and live subtitles can translate the other participants into your language.

Is it free? Do I need an account?

Free and open source (Apache-2.0), with no account and no telemetry. You build it on your Mac from the source code with Apple’s Command Line Tools; Xcode and an Apple account are not needed. Version 0.9 is a public beta.

Is Vauta an alternative to Otter, Granola or Fireflies?

Yes, on a Mac with Apple silicon. Like them, it turns your calls into notes and minutes. Unlike them, it transcribes on your Mac, needs no account and is free; they also run on Windows or the web, and Vauta only on a Mac. The comparisons above link to each vendor’s own documentation.

Does it work offline?

Yes, once the models are on your Mac. Transcription uses Apple’s speech model, downloaded once per language, and the minutes are written by Apple Intelligence on your Mac or by your own model server on your network. The internet is needed only for those downloads.

Get Vauta
Free and open source

Build it on your Mac with the commands below. Every line of code it runs is public.

Terminal 
$ git clone https://github.com/MaquinaTech/Vauta.git$ cd Vauta# once, recommended (asks for passwords)$ ./scripts/setup-signing.sh$ ./scripts/install.sh
Get Vauta on GitHub Installation guide
  • Apple silicon
  • macOS 26+
  • Command Line Tools · macOS 27 SDK

No Xcode, no Apple account, nothing prebuilt to trust.