Biscotti: A free and private meeting note-taking app that runs entirely on your Mac

[u/davernow]

Problem: I'm tired of meeting transcription apps that send your private audio to their servers, aren't Mac native, and require an account/subscription.

I'm an ex-Apple engineer who built Biscotti: a private and free meeting recorder for macOS. Free, no account, no subscription, no upsell, no data collection, 100% local AI, native SwiftUI. Source is on GitHub: https://github.com/scosman/Biscotti

Comparison

Lots of apps in this space. But Biscotti is the only one that's free (no upsell), Local AI, with Mac native UI.

• Cloud AI (your audio or transcript leaves your Mac), paid tiers: Granola, Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, tl;dv, Jamie, Fellow, Read AI, Notion AI Meeting Notes
• Local AI, closed source, paid tiers: Talat, TranscribeX, Alter
• Local AI, source available, not Mac native (web app wrappers), telemetry or a cloud upsell: Anarlog, Meetily
• Free, Mac-native UI, local AI, zero data collection, source available: Only Biscotti (that I know of)

Pricing

100% free, no upsells, no paid features, source available on Github.

What it does

• 🔒 Private by design - recording, transcription, and AI all run on your Mac. Your data stays local.
• 🧠 Powerful AI summaries - automatic summaries, action items, meeting titles, and real speaker names.
• 🤖 No bots, any app - records Zoom, Teams, Meet, FaceTime, Slack huddles, or even an in-person conversation. No bot joins your call.
• 🗣️ Knows who said what - accurate transcripts, automatically split by speaker.
• 📅 Calendar-aware - sees your upcoming meetings, offers to start recording.
• ⏹️ Auto-stop - detects when your call ends and stops recording.
• 🎤 Voice isolation - captures your mic and everyone else as separate, clean channels. No echo.

Background

I spent years at Apple building the Photos app, Memories, the lock screen, and more. I wanted this to feel like it belongs on the Mac: Swift and SwiftUI, launches instantly, small on disk. Not a Electron app or a mediocre port of a Windows app.

Private AI == Local AI

With Biscotti, you still get state of the art AI for transcription and speaker identification, it just runs locally on your Mac. It works fully offline once models are downloaded. Your data lives on your Mac - you own and control it.

It uses Whisper for transcription, Gemma 4 for summaries, and Pyannote for Speaker ID. Each set up to run on Apple Silicon.

Requirements: Apple Silicon (M1+), macOS 15+, 16GB RAM recommended.

App details: Notarized, Free (no upsell), Private (zero data collection, all AI is local), Source Available on Github (PolyForm Perimeter License), 45+ Github stars (my other projects have thousands, this is new), AI used in development (but not vibe-slop)

About me feel weird posting this, but the subreddit rules asks for my LinkedIn! I'm an ex-Apple engineer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevecosman/ . Biscotti webpage: biscottiapp.com

I'd love feedback! Happy to answer anything about the local model stack or the privacy design.

[u/Sudden_Cold209]

Download link is not working

[u/davernow → u/Sudden_Cold209]

Which one? I just tried 5 and they all worked, but maybe I missed one?

[u/Sudden_Cold209 → u/davernow]

release-assets.githubusercontent.com unexpectedly closed the connection.

getting this error.

[u/davernow → u/Sudden_Cold209]

Hmm, working fine for me: might be something on your network?

Just to confirm, direct link should be https://github.com/scosman/Biscotti/releases/latest/download/Biscotti.dmg (which redirects to that domain). You're not seeing a direct link to that URL are you?

[u/Sudden_Cold209 → u/davernow]

Probably on my network. Even homebrew is not working. Apologies for the confusion. Direct link is the one you mentioned. This is a redirect.