Takku
Granola, ChatGPT and the AI built into Meet, Teams and Zoom write meeting notes too, and each of them does something better than Takku.
What follows about other products comes from their own pages, read in October 2026. If something has changed, tell us and we’ll correct it.
If you record a meeting once in a while, keep it simple: record it with Voice Memos or your call app, give the file to ChatGPT or another assistant, and ask for the notes. If your company already pays for Gemini in Meet, Copilot in Teams or a Zoom plan, the notes are a click away in the call itself, with nothing to install.
Takku is worth it when meetings are part of every day. Then you spend minutes on every meeting recording, uploading, writing the prompt and filing the result, and a lot of your audio ends up on someone else’s servers.
Upload a recording and ask for notes or, on a Mac with a paid plan, use its record mode: it records the call and writes a summary, kept among your chats. If you already pay for ChatGPT, it is the easiest way to start. OpenAI deletes the audio once it has transcribed it; with Plus and Pro it can use the transcripts to train its models unless you turn that off. Record mode works best in English.
Where Takku differs: one shortcut in any call app, and the note is already in a folder on your Mac with your own notes, the participants from your calendar and the template you chose, every time, without a prompt. The audio stays on your Mac.
Long recordings are the other difference. Asked for the full text of a long recording in one go, a model shortens it more and more as it goes: on a 75-minute lecture, one request kept 48% of what was said. A Takku template with full_text: true writes it ten minutes at a time and kept 89%, the end as detailed as the beginning.
Gemini’s “Take notes for me” in Meet (Workspace Business Standard and above, or Google AI Pro and Ultra), the recap of Teams (with Teams Premium or Microsoft 365 Copilot), AI Companion in paid Zoom plans. If your company has them, they are the easiest choice: nothing to install, and the notes reach everyone in the call. Each works only in its own app, the notes live in that company’s cloud, and the host or your company decides whether they are on.
Where Takku differs: it works the same in every call app, including a client’s on their own tool, and the notes are files of yours.
The closest to Takku on data: no bot and, according to Jamie, data kept in the EU; on Mac and Windows. The transcription runs in Jamie’s cloud, not on your computer. Free for 10 meetings a month of up to 30 minutes; Plus is 25 € a month.
MacWhisper and others also transcribe on your Mac, and they are excellent with audio files. They aim at transcripts more than meeting notes: a summary needs an AI account you connect.
Notes and Voice Memos transcribe for free, and with Apple Intelligence they summarise a recording. Enough for a lecture or a conversation in person, kept on your phone. When you want more than that, send the recording to your Mac and import it into Takku: it becomes a meeting like the others, in your notes folder.
Granola is the best-known app of this kind: a polished cloud service with apps for every device. Both record your calls without a bot.
| Takku | Granola | |
|---|---|---|
| Recording | No bot: your microphone and what your Mac plays, or a recording you import | No bot: your device’s audio |
| Transcription | On your Mac, with Parakeet or Whisper | By cloud providers such as Deepgram and AssemblyAI |
| Audio | Never leaves your Mac, deleted after 7 days or kept as long as you choose | Sent for transcription, then deleted |
| Summary | Apple Intelligence, a model on your Mac, or a provider you choose | AI providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic |
| Notes | Markdown files in a folder on your Mac, Obsidian or not | Granola’s cloud, on AWS in the United States, with no EU data residency |
| Devices | Mac with Apple Silicon | Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android |
| Price | Free and open source | Free with 30 days of history; Business $14 and Enterprise $35 per user per month |
You record a meeting now and then. Your company already includes notes in Meet, Teams or Zoom, and you only use that app. You want notes on your phone or on Windows, or a team that shares meetings in one place.
You have meetings every day, in different apps. You want the notes as files on your Mac, next to what you write. The audio must stay on your Mac, or your company wants the data in the EU. And you’d rather not pay a subscription.
Where your data goes lists everything Takku keeps and sends.
Granola’s pricing, security page and data FAQ, read on 11 October 2026. OpenAI’s help on ChatGPT record mode; Google’s Workspace update and supported languages for “Take notes for me”; Microsoft’s Teams Premium licensing; Zoom’s AI Companion announcement; Jamie’s plans. Read on 25 October 2026.