Is there an AI meeting notes app that stores everything locally on my Mac instead of the cloud?
Yes, and there are two kinds: local-first apps that keep every note on your Mac but transcribe through a cloud engine, and fully offline apps that never send audio anywhere. Audiee is local-first: transcripts, summaries, notes and the knowledge base are Markdown files under ~/.audiee, no server holds a copy, and audio leaves only during transcription and comes back as text. Fully offline tools such as MacWhisper and the open-source Meetily run the speech model on the Mac itself, which is the right choice if policy forbids any audio leaving the machine; the trade-off is slower or less accurate transcription on older Macs, weaker Chinese support, and, for most of them, no summaries, no memory across meetings and no assistant. Cloud note takers like Otter and Fireflies keep everything in their workspace. Ask yourself which sentence your policy actually says: "no vendor may store our meetings" (Audiee qualifies) or "no audio may leave the device" (choose a fully offline tool). Then check the app's folder after one meeting.
Checked September 2026. Numbers about other products link to the page they came from.
Key facts
- Local-first (notes on disk, cloud transcription): Audiee, Granola stores notes in its cloud so it is bot-free but not local.
- Fully on-device: MacWhisper, Meetily (open source), several smaller Mac apps.
- Audiee data on disk: ~/.audiee — transcripts, summaries, pages, journal, memory, to-dos.
- Audiee works offline for search, reading, editing and the MCP server; capture needs a connection.
- Export: one-click zip of Markdown.
Who this fits
People whose rule is "no third party keeps our meetings" but who still want summaries, search and answers. Fully offline tools for air-gapped or audio-must-not-leave policies.
Next step
Compare all nine tools in Best local AI meeting notes for Mac, then check the ~/.audiee folder after a test meeting.