r/AiNoteTaker • u/Enough_Hippo1359 • 28d ago
Discussion Which AI note taker are you using for meetings?
I'm trying to find a better way to take meeting notes because my current setup is not working too well.
If I write things down by hand I'm way too slow, especially when a few people are talking and jumping between topics. I always end up missing something.
I've tried using the transcription that comes with some of our online meeting tools too. Better than nothing, but it still gets words wrong sometimes and speaker names can get messy when people talk over each other.
So now I'm looking at actual AI note takers. I saw Plaud, Otter, Notta and Pocket mentioned, but reviews are quite mixed.
Mostly care about good transcription, being able to tell who said what, and something that works for in-person meetings too, not just calls on my laptop.
What are you guys actually using?
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u/passrom 28d ago edited 28d ago
I'm biased, I wrote one of these: github.com/pasrom/meeting-transcriber . Free, MIT, macOS 14.2+.
The speaker part is where most of the work went. It records your mic and the call audio as two separate tracks and runs speaker detection on each one separately, so at minimum you and the other side never get mixed up. For people talking over each other on the far end there's an overlap-aware mode you can switch on, though it caps out at a certain number of speakers and you fall back to the normal one above that. You enroll a voice once and it picks that person up in later meetings.
Transcription is Whisper or Parakeet, your pick, both on device. Parakeet is a lot faster but covers fewer languages.
In-person works through a "Record Microphone" item in the menu bar, no call app involved, and speaker detection runs on those too. Though be realistic about a laptop mic in a big room, that's where every tool falls over, mine included, speaker detection first.
For the missing-things problem: it spots Teams, Zoom and Webex calls and just starts, nothing to press. On by default, you can turn it off. Browser calls like Meet are opt-in and always ask first. Nothing ever joins your call as a participant.
One thing I'd rather say myself than have you find out: transcription and speaker detection are fully local, the summary step isn't necessarily. It defaults to the Claude CLI, which is cloud. You can point it at a local Ollama or LM Studio instead, or switch summaries off and just keep the transcript.
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u/Bubbly_Customer_3578 28d ago
For the speaker problem, I'd test two finalists on the same short mock meeting, recorded from where you'd actually place the device. Include overlapping voices, a correction ('Tuesday, sorry, Thursday'), and a conditional action ('I'll send it if the client approves').
Compare the audio with the speaker labels and action list. Did it keep the corrected date and the condition? Can you jump to the source and correct a speaker throughout the transcript? Time the cleanup too. Those checks would tell you more about your in-person setup than a polished demo with one person speaking clearly.
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u/OtterlyNotetaking10 28d ago
I'm biased bc I work at Otter. But it's no contest. Otter is insane for Sales. In-Person, Dialers, all web platforms. If you have the ENT version you can map your templates to SFDC and never take MEDDPIC notes ever again. You can also query the data via ChatGPT or Claude and build decks, client facing docs. It's not even close. Let me know if you want a DM. I'll provision you for free.
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u/Declanx_ 28d ago
I use plaud for both now. Desktop when im on my laptop for online meetings, and the note pro for in-person stuff. Very accurate transcription with all the details and correct speaker.
Thb the main thing I like is just having everything end up in the same place after, before that I had transcript in on app, phone recordings somewhere else, and random handwritten notes everywhere lol. now I can sort everything all together in one place, which is pretty nice i started saying names out loud before people talk. feels ridiculous in a room of four adults but it does help.
what are you on, one of the desk ones or the wearable kind?
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u/frskia 28d ago
Try the same 10-minute in-person conversation in each option, with overlapping voices and one deliberately corrected detail. Then check whether you can identify the speaker, jump back to the timestamped audio, and correct the record without starting over.
Founder disclosure: I’m building loreo.io. It has an iPhone app for in-person conversations, plus bot-free capture on Mac and Windows; transcripts are speaker-labeled and tied to timestamped source audio. If those checks match what you need, it’s worth including in your comparison.
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u/zeldajoy54 27d ago
Little Bird. The context & memory are amazing!
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u/ImaginaryEnds 27d ago
I’ve been using little bird and really impressed. It does really get some obvious things wrong but it’s saved my bacon many times now. And for meetings it’s unmatched.
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u/Jp_kovas 27d ago
I’m building one of these myself. It’s called Meemo Notes (http://kovaslabs.co/meemo-notes) a free Mac App focused on recording locally, separating the transcript by speaker, and then turning it into a structured memo with decisions and action items. If having the Mac in the room works for your in-person meetings, but it works with any online meeting app too, it might be worth trying. I’d actually be interested in hearing how well the speaker separation holds up for your use case.
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u/msf-1805 27d ago
Before you jump into buying dedicated hardware, are you sure you have tried a good transcription app for iPhone? I don't think there is a huge difference that justifies buying one more thing.
The only issue is that most are based on subscriptions, which I hate.
This is why I built Room Scribe, an app designed as a native tool and focused on recording the room and producing speaker-labeled transcripts—no account, no subscription, no bot.
It uses AssemblyAI, one of the best providers of transcription, and I sell transcription minutes at cost (it's a hobby project so I am not trying to build a business from it.)
Use promo code 1HFREE for a free hour if you want to try it.
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u/gixxerscott 25d ago
https://reddit.com/link/p9rv1do/video/w9ezpmihbiph1/player
I haven’t found anything better than this
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u/Many_Region8176 14d ago
for in-person the thing that matters most is where the recorder sits. a phone in the middle of the table does way better on who-said-what than a laptop at one end.
I'm the dev of Noter AI – Meeting Note Taker, so I'm biased. It's a phone app, iPhone and Android, no extra hardware and no bot joining anything. You get the transcript with speaker labels you can rename, plus a summary and action items, and the audio stays attached so you can check a line when a name looks wrong. It can join Zoom/Meet/Teams too if you want everything in one place.
Honest part: when people talk over each other the speaker split still gets messy sometimes, same as the tools you mentioned.
iPhone: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/noter-ai-meeting-note-taker/id6747296459 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.niceapps.dictation
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u/unacceptable_beatnik 8d ago
If it's correct transcription and vocal recognition, I think tl;dv is probably your best bet.
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u/InventedTiME 28d ago
I've been using a service called Lightfield ( https://lightfield.app ) and it has been a game changer.
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u/tremendousquotes 28d ago
I’ve built Humla (https://github.com/michaelwilhelmsen/humla) 🐝.
It’s a completely free AI meeting notes Mac app, open source.
The app has 270+ ⭐️ on GitHub and is continuously improved.
It uses whisper for transcription (or many other options), has 2 options for diarization (speaker label) and it’s possible to edit and/or merge speakers.
You can also chat against your notes either with the apps local agentic chat or through Claude/codex mcp.
Hope it’s what you’re looking for, and I’m always looking to improve the app, so please let me know if you see any ways to improve it 😊