meeting notes, taken on your own machine

Be in the meeting. Read it afterwards.

Some conversations you need a record of and cannot hand to a transcription vendor — the 1:1 about somebody's performance, the call with the lawyer, the board update about a round nobody has announced. Record it, get the transcript and your own notes afterwards, and stop typing while somebody is talking to you. It runs in your browser, and the writing-up runs on your computer rather than on somebody else's. $29 once. Yours for life.

Open it and record something →First: what it can and can't capture ↓

the part you need before you decide

What a browser can hear, exactly.

It can hear you

Your microphone, in any browser that can run this app at all. That is your half of every conversation, and the room you are sitting in.

And it can hear them, if you hand it the tab

You share the tab the meeting is in — the same picker you already use to share your screen — and tick the box that says share the tab's audio. That gives ownnotes the voices coming out of the call, as a second track, separate from your microphone. The picture is not recorded; only the sound is.

On Windows and ChromeOS, Chrome and Edge can also offer your computer's whole audio output when you share an entire screen. The picker is the only thing that can tell you what your browser is willing to include.

It cannot quietly record anything

There is no way to point this at a meeting app and have it listen. A browser records what you explicitly hand it through its own picker, and it shows its own indicator the entire time. If your calls happen in a desktop program rather than a browser tab, read the next line carefully before you buy.

A desktop browser on a secure connection. Chrome or Edge to record the other side of the call as well; in Safari and Firefox you can record your own microphone only.

We would rather lose the sale here than in a support reply three days later.

Everywhere it won't work

It cannot reach a meeting running in a desktop app on its own. If Zoom or Teams is a separate program rather than a browser tab, the only way your browser can hear it is if it offers your computer's audio when you share a whole screen — Chrome and Edge sometimes do, Safari and Firefox never do.
In Safari and Firefox, sharing gives no audio at all. You can still record your own microphone and get your half written down; you will not get the other side.
On a phone or tablet there is no screen sharing to take audio from, so it is microphone only.
Sharing a single application window carries no audio in any browser. It has to be a tab, or a whole screen.
Your browser stops the share when you press its own stop button, when the tab closes, and sometimes when you switch tabs — the other side's track ends there. ownnotes says so on screen the moment it happens and keeps recording your microphone.
On speakers rather than headphones, your microphone also picks up the other people, so a few lines can turn up on both tracks.
DRM-protected audio is silent when a browser captures it. Meeting calls are not affected; a film in another tab is.
Some virtual machines and remote-desktop sessions route audio in a way the browser cannot see, and certain Bluetooth paths behave differently from wired or built-in output.
The microphone records the room, including whoever walks into it.

Twenty-seven seconds, and it opens on the consent step. That is in the film because you cannot get past it in the app either, and cutting it to reach the transcript sooner would be cutting the argument.

Then a real microphone, the speech model running in that same tab, and the lines arriving as it catches up. Watch the header when it finishes: it says microphone only, because that is what was chosen on the consent screen — what you tell it is written into the meeting and printed at the top of every export you ever make of it.

Connect what you want recorded

Your microphone, and — in Chrome or Edge — the audio of the tab your call is in. Two separate tracks, two live level meters, and nothing being kept until you say so.

Say you're recording, then press record

A screen you cannot skip hands you a sentence to paste into the chat. What you chose is written into the meeting and printed at the top of every export.

Watch it get written down

The transcript appears as the meeting runs, made by a speech model on your own machine. Drop markers on a hotkey. Stop, and the notes, highlights, chapters and exports are there.

the part nobody else puts on the box

This records other people. We are not going to pretend that's neutral.

Recording law varies by country and by state, and your employer may have rules of its own. Telling people you are recording is your responsibility, not something an app can do for you — so this one makes it a single tap and shows an indicator the whole time you are recording.

There is no hidden-recording mode and there never will be. The indicator cannot be switched off, and we will not build a “discreet” one — a privacy tool that helps you violate someone else's privacy is not a privacy tool.

So it is a step in the app rather than a line in the terms: you cannot get to the record button without passing a screen that hands you the sentence, and what you chose is written into the meeting and printed at the top of every export.

The sentences it hands you. One tap, paste it in the chat:

Most calls
Quick heads up — I'm recording this so I can take notes properly. Say if you'd rather I didn't.
When people worry where it goes
I'm recording this for my own notes. It stays on my laptop — no transcription service, no bot in the call.
Customers and candidates
Before we start: I'd like to record this so I don't have to type while you talk. It's stored locally and I can delete it afterwards — is that alright with you?
When you'd rather ask than tell
Would you mind if I recorded this? Only for my notes, and I'll delete it once they're written up.

What you get afterwards

real code, sample meeting ↓

ownnotes.co · sample recording, nothing is being captured

The film showed the recording half. This is the half you keep, and you can press its buttons. A sample meeting, so nothing here needs your microphone.

The transcript merge, the highlights, the chapters and the caption exports above are the same code the app runs, computed in this page, on a conversation you can read. Open Highlights and look at what is next to each line: the timestamp it was lifted from, and the exact phrase that caught it — that is why it is called Highlights and not Summary, and the timestamp is a button back to the transcript.

Every export button produces a real file. Open it full-size ↗ if the frame is in the way. For the recording half, open the app; there is nothing to sign up for.

Where the transcription happens

Transcription runs here, in this tab, on a small speech model that came with the app — so it keeps going with the wifi off, and it costs nothing per meeting because nobody is being paid per meeting. It also means your laptop is doing the work: it keeps up with a normal conversation on a modern machine, and on a long or busy call it can fall behind and catch up after you stop. The recording is always the thing being kept; the transcript is caught up from it.

Transcription needs a one-time 68 MB download — the speech model itself. It is kept on this computer afterwards and never fetched again. You can record without it: the audio is kept, and it is written up once the model is there.

How good it is, said plainly

We do not publish an accuracy number and nobody should infer one. The model that ships understands English only, and it is a small one: clean speech from one or two people comes out well, and a noisy five-person call with cross-talk and mixed accents comes out materially worse. That is why the audio is kept, why every highlight carries the timestamp it came from, and why the transcript is editable.

Highlights are called Highlights and never Summary, because they are not one: each is a sentence somebody actually said, picked out by matching ordinary phrases, carrying the timestamp it came from. There is no AI summary in this app and no API key to bring.

Everything it sends, in full

Not “it never touches the internet” — that would be false, and you can check this list yourself with the network tab open. Your recordings, transcripts and notes are on none of it.

The app's own files, from ownnotes.co, the first time you open it — and then not again while the offline copy is current.
The transcriber, once, from ownnotes.co. It is a file we serve ourselves; there is no third-party model host involved and no per-meeting call to anyone.
Confirming your licence, and re-confirming it about every two weeks. That exchange knows your email and which app you own. It has never been told a meeting exists.

Two things are worth knowing before you rely on that. Anything on this computer is as private as this computer — a shared or managed machine is somebody else's too. And a browser will clear site storage if it is told to; keep the exports for anything you cannot lose.

Your meetings do not follow you to another computer. There is no account holding them and no sync in this app — a meeting archive on somebody's server is the thing you are leaving behind, and half-building one would be worse than not having it. Moving a meeting elsewhere is an export, and every export is one click and never behind the licence.

no subscription required

The subscription note-takers bill every month, forever, and the recording lives on their servers while they do. Two things follow from that and neither is a detail: the archive of everything your company said out loud is sitting on somebody else's disk, and the day you stop paying is the day you stop having it.

That is not a business model we could copy even if we wanted to, because nothing here costs us anything per meeting. The transcription is done by your own machine. So the price is $29, once, and the meetings are files on your computer that do not need us to still exist in 2031.

One price, and it is the only one — no feature tiers and nothing billed per machine. No weekly rental either: at this price renting would cost you more than owning it inside a month. It is a web app you can install to your dock or home screen, and that is everything the purchase includes — there is no desktop download, on any operating system, and we would rather say so than imply one.

$29once, forever

The whole app, for life

Every feature and every future update — the transcription and the exports included.

Get ownnotes or open it first and record something

the honest small print

We will never quote an accuracy number, and the model that ships understands English only. “You” and “Others” come from the two separate tracks and are correct by construction; naming individual people is deliberately not in version one, because being wrong about who said what in a meeting transcript is a serious failure, not a cosmetic one. The transcript can fall behind on a long call and there is a button that finishes it from the recording afterwards. Meetings live in this browser on this computer: they do not follow you to another machine, and a browser told to clear site data will clear them, so export anything you cannot lose. Once we start charging, the app confirms your licence and then runs offline for 14 days between checks; after that it asks you to reconnect once, with nothing expired and nothing owed — and your recordings and every export stay available regardless, including on the lock screen itself.