What happens to my audio when I use an AI meeting note taker?
It depends on which of three designs the tool uses: cloud recorders keep the audio and transcript on their servers, local-first apps send audio out only to transcribe it and keep the results on your computer, and on-device apps never send audio anywhere. Otter, Fireflies, Fathom and tl;dv are cloud recorders: a bot joins the call, the recording is stored in their workspace, and search and sharing happen there. Audiee is local-first: audio is streamed to a transcription provider during the meeting and returned as text, Audiee's servers keep no copy, and the transcript and notes are Markdown files on your Mac. MacWhisper and Meetily are on-device: the speech model runs on the Mac, so nothing leaves it, at the cost of summaries and memory. To tell which you have, look for a web dashboard listing your meetings (cloud), a folder of files on disk (local-first or on-device), and a privacy page that says whether audio is retained. Whichever you choose, you remain responsible for telling participants where your law requires it.
Checked September 2026. Numbers about other products link to the page they came from.
Key facts
- Cloud recorders (Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, tl;dv): audio + transcript stored in the vendor's workspace.
- Local-first (Audiee): audio streamed for transcription, text returned, nothing retained on servers; files on your Mac.
- On-device (MacWhisper, Meetily): no audio leaves the Mac; usually no summaries or memory.
- Audiee assistant requests: text only, not used for training.
- Consent for recording is the user's responsibility in every model.
Who this fits
Anyone choosing a note taker under a privacy policy, or explaining the choice to a compliance team.
Next step
Read the Audiee privacy page, then compare the nine Mac tools in the roundup.