A Local AI Note Taker That Keeps Your Meetings Private

Natively is a free AI note taker that transcribes your meetings and turns them into structured, searchable notes — entirely on your own device. There is no bot in your call and no transcript sitting on a vendor's server. You get the automatic notes, action items, and summaries you'd expect from a cloud tool, with the privacy of fully local processing.

What a great AI note taker should do

A note taker is only useful if you trust it and can find things later. That means three things: accurate transcription of who said what, concise summaries that capture decisions and action items rather than every word, and real recall so a note from three weeks ago is one search away. Natively is built around all three, and adds a privacy guarantee most cloud tools can't make.

How Natively takes notes

• Live transcription with on-device Whisper, capturing both meeting audio and your microphone on separate channels.
• Automatic summaries that condense long conversations, with epoch summarization that keeps even multi-hour meetings coherent.
• Speaker diarization (Pro) so notes attribute statements to the right person.
• Searchable dashboard — browse and search every past meeting by keyword or date, with global cross-meeting semantic search.
• Export anywhere — Markdown, JSON, or plain text, so your notes drop straight into Notion, Obsidian, Docs, or a ticket.
• Local RAG memory — built on SQLite and sqlite-vec, fully offline, automatically indexing in the background.

Local notes vs cloud notes

Cloud note takers like Otter and Fireflies are mature and convenient, but they work by uploading your meeting audio and storing transcripts on their infrastructure. For one-on-ones about compensation, client calls under NDA, or internal strategy, that's a meaningful exposure.

Natively keeps everything on your machine by default. In local mode there is zero outbound traffic, and because it's open source and local-first, you can verify exactly what it does with your data. Compare directly: Natively vs Otter and Natively vs Fireflies.

Beyond note taking

Because Natively also runs in real time, it does more than record. During the call it can suggest answers, recap what was just said, or surface a follow-up question — the same engine that powers its AI meeting assistant and interview features. One app covers note taking and live assistance across every kind of conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a free AI note taker that works offline?

Yes. Natively's note taking is free, and with Ollama and on-device Whisper it works completely offline — transcription and summarization both run locally, so you can take notes on a plane or in a secure environment with no internet.

Can I export my meeting notes?

Yes. Every meeting can be exported to Markdown, JSON, or plain text from the local dashboard, so your notes move cleanly into your existing tools.

Does it label different speakers?

Speaker diarization is available in Natively Pro, attributing each statement to the correct speaker. Core transcription and note taking are available for free.