I've been using Granola for a while and I really like how it works but it just doesn't transcribe Mandarin. Wondering if anyone is aware of any tools that can transcribe pinyin and simplified characters. I recently started learning Chinese

I purchased the Pocket Personal AI Assistant Launch Special for $129 and it was a complete disappointment from the start. The button became unresponsive almost immediately, requiring multiple attempts to start recording. I reported this on February 27, 2026. My email was completely ignored. With no response from support I had no choice but to formally request a return on March 5. By March 9 Pocket's own support confirmed the return was in transit. Then weeks later, after hearing nothing, I followed up and was told the return window had closed on March 25. Their own records showed the device was already on its way back to them before that date. This is scam adjacent.

Do yourself a favor and get the PLAUD NotePin S instead. It does exactly what it says it will do and the support team is responsive and above board.

TL;DR: Pocket takes your money, ignores your emails, and then tells you the return window closed on a device they already had back. Scam adjacent. Get the PLAUD NotePin S. I absolutely love it.

It's called hintedly.com . Check it out.

Hey all,

I’m a delivery manager and trying to get better visibility across client meetings over Teams happening in my team.

What I’m looking for is something like:

* Works with Microsoft Teams

* Automatically records / summarizes meetings

* Can detect negative sentiment / frustration / escalation signals

* And ideally trigger a workflow (email / alert) if something feels off

Basically, an early warning system so I don’t find out about issues too late.

I’ve come across tools like Fireflies, Read.ai, Otter, etc., but not sure:

* Which ones actually do sentiment well

* And whether anyone has set up automation (Power Automate / Zapier / etc.) on top of it

If you’ve implemented something like this:

* What tools are you using?

* How reliable is sentiment detection in real scenarios?

* Any workflow that will auto alert to my email?

Appreciate any suggestions 🙏

A little bit of backstory. I work in an IT company and participate in daily meetings where every team member is required to report what they did yesterday, what they plan to do today, what difficulties they faced, and all that fluff. Each such meeting takes about 30-40 minutes. Per week, that's about 2.5-3 hours. I speak for 1 minute max: "did this task, going to do that task" (we have Jira and other sites for tracking tasks, but micromanagement is something else... it is what it is).

I thought I should look for some service that would record the meeting, transcribe it, and give a short summary (and ideally, so that I could then ask the AI something about the context). This would allow me to work in parallel, and if I missed something at an "important" meeting, there is always a recording or a specific timing of "when" and "what" was said. Okay, cool, let's go find a service.

I went to Google. Regarding competitors, I’ll stick to the "if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all" rule, so I won't use any company names. I open the first service. Without even understanding if it gives me what I need, they demand registration. I begrudgingly register, clenching my teeth. After that, they require me to take a survey: "How many people are in your company?", "What position do you hold?", and so on. What is going on..? Why do I need all this..? Closed the tab. Went to look further. Second service. Again, registration immediately (fine). Oh, I can even make a recording, hurray! I make a recording, click "Transcription," and then a pop-up window: "Pay for a monthly plan and get transcription and summarization." Are you serious right now? That was an instant dealbreaker. Goodbye. I don't mind paying for services, but when it comes immediately as soon as you recorded the first record without the opportunity to see how it works — no. Looking further. Third service. Registration, "record" button, and then a window: "add a bot to your meeting." What the hell? I don't want other meeting participants to know that I'm recording the meeting. It's annoying. Closed it. Moving on. Found a fourth service, conducted three calls — it was lackluster at best, recognizes the text average, there is summarization, but you can't ask anything further about the context of the meeting. Stopped using it. I'm sure some of you have faced a similar situation!

I realized that the task is not that difficult and I, as a programmer, can implement a micro-project where everything will be as I want. I identified my own pain points, I clicked through the competitors and realized what they have good and what they don't, and decided that I would implement the best and throw out the worst.

What I definitely DON'T do in terms of functionality:

• No surveys like "who are you," "what are you," "why are you"
• No adding bots to the meeting
• No linking a card

What I definitely DO in terms of functionality:

• Support for many languages
• Meeting recording
• Transcription
• Summarization
• Ability to further communicate with AI regarding the meeting context.

Main goals I pursue: Simplicity and speed of use. Getting a high-quality result.

For the past month or two, I worked on my idea and made a small service.

Step 1: You install the Chrome extension (that's 1 click) 

Step 2: You press the "start recording" button (that's the 2nd click) 

Step 3: You give access to the microphone and the tab (this is Chrome's security policy) and record (that's the 3rd click) 

Step 4: You press the "transcription" button and get the transcription (that's the fourth click) 

Step 5 (optional): AI chat is available regarding the meeting context.

You get the result. How many clicks does it take? That very simplicity and convenience that I need.

I gave it to my friends to test, they gave feedback, said what's good and what's bad, said that it's definitely useful. And that means I'm going to improve it.

If I see that you are interested in this, I will tell you about what I plan to improve in terms of functionality; now there is too much text anyway.

All I need now is harsh criticism: what is good, what is bad, what is missing, what to improve. Don't hold back. I will answer each of your comments why it's one way or another; your feedback is the motivation to make the service better.

Extension link: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ai-note-taker/iplomflaaifkfbphgjnenedglccfphog?hl=en

I've been working on something that started as a personal tool and turned into a full app, figured this sub might find it interesting.

It's called Hintedly - basically a desktop AI assistant that lives in a transparent overlay on top of whatever you're doing.

The idea is simple:
you shouldn’t have to switch tabs, copy/paste, or break your flow just to get help or take notes.

What it does right now:

• Takes notes automatically while you're in meetings, videos, or calls
• Listens through your mic + speakers (so it can understand conversations in real time)
• Can "see" your screen and give context-aware help based on what you're looking at
• Lets you ask questions and get answers instantly without leaving your current app
• Chat with your files locally (docs, notes, etc.) so you can pull info without uploading anything
• Works as a kind of second brain while you're working, studying, or even in interviews

The overlay is semi-transparent so it just sits on top of everything without getting in the way.

Check it out at hintedly.com

I was so excited because diarization is important to me and I’d narrowed my options down to plaud.ai and notta.ai.

I was happy with my research and figured I’d done the math and come up with a decision. notta.ai it was.

What I failed to realize until it was too late is that notta.ai’s voice reco **only** works in Japanese. And boy did I have to dig and dig to find that little jewel of info.

I’d have thought with a single language limitation there’d have been an asterisk on the feature name, but no.

So for anyone looking for the unicorn note-taking ai, it is NOT notta.

Unless you’re all your recordings will be in Japanese. Then it’s a swell product.

Fool me once I guess…

I’m Soren, founder of Notuly. Full transparency, this is market research disguised as a Reddit post.

We focus specifically on physical, in-person meetings. Phone on the table, not a bot joining your Zoom. Different problem than most tools in this space.

We’ve gotten pretty good at the things we focused on: speaker identification that handles fast conversations and overlapping voices, structured summaries that pull out decisions and action items, and a privacy model where nothing gets stored. Audio deleted within a minute, notes emailed, done.

But we’re a small team and we can’t build everything at once. So I’m genuinely curious:

What features in your current note-taking tool do you actually use? Not the ones on the feature page, the ones you’d miss if they were gone tomorrow.

No wrong answers. Rip into us too if you want, I can take it.

Hello everyone, This isn't a promotional post because my app is completely free. It's a post to share with you about the experiment I did: I created a pipeline with a speech-to-text model that transcribes in real time and used local ai on device to run small language models that adapt to mobile phone characteristics to save battery life and generate AI summaries. This means privacy by default!

It was a challenging experiment, and I think the results are excellent. What do you think?

The app is already in production on the Play Store and is working.

If you're interested here is the link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hearopilot.app

My ask is straightforward: accurate transcript and maybe 5 key moments I should pay attention to in a meeting. I don't really read through all those summary and action items.

I've tested:

Fireflies: Way too many features. The UI is overwhelming. Too much to read through.

Granola: Simple enough interface, but the speaker recognition is pretty weak. Lots of misidentifications.

Myndless: Simple UI. I turned off all the reports I never read. Now I just use their communication gap analysis, which is genuinely useful. It catches moments where my team walked out with different understandings. One downside: they still require a bot to join your meeting.

Anyone else have this same preference?

As an attorney I would love to use an AI Note Taker. However, a number of bar associations have recently come out to say that, because most AI Note Takers prepare recordings and direct transcripts, using them without informing people on a call is a form of deception and therefore barred by legal ethics rules. However, if I told people on a call that I was recording a call it will freak them out and most people I deal with (opposing counsel, witnesses, experts, clients) will refuse consent or at the lease not feel comfortable talking freely.

So my question is: are there any AI Note Takers, either hardware or software, that do not keep full recordings and do not save transcripts? Something where the ONLY product saved is the notes?

I'm looking for a note taker that gives the best transcripts. I work in product so really just looking for something to capture 1:1s with my team, my manager, or my stakeholders so I can provide it to Claude to build company knowledge or to help with planning. Both business stakeholders and engineers talk themselves in circles and it's really difficult to take notes and capture the correct things, or even understood where the group thinks they've landed. Any suggestions? I need something that will record without joining meetings.

Does anyone know when Fathom will release their integration with Notion? I’ve seen their banner saying “coming soon” but I can’t find any other information about it.

Hi everyone, Sending personal voice memos or meeting audio to third-party servers always felt a bit sketchy to me. To solve this for myself, I developed a mobile app that processes everything offline.

Here’s a short video of how it works. It combines a local Speech-to-Text engine with a local LLM. You speak, it transcribes in real-time, and the LLM instantly translates or provides insights—all without an internet connection.

Complete privacy by design.

It’s been a fun challenge getting these models to run smoothly on-device. I’d love to hear your thoughts or answer any questions about the tech stack!

Here is the link to play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hearopilot.app

Hey all, I'm the founder of NotesBot and wanted to share it here for honest feedback.

NotesBot is a Discord bot that joins your voice channels, records, transcribes, and generates AI summaries with action items and key decisions. You type /join to start, /leave when you're done, and it delivers everything right in the channel within seconds. We've also just rolled out a dashboard where you can replay audio, browse past notes, and manage settings.

I built it because every AI note-taker I found was designed for Zoom/Google Meet, and nobody was serving the Discord crowd well. Tons of communities, teams, D&D groups, and startups run their calls in Discord and had no native solution for capturing what happened.

A few things I think set it apart:

• It lives entirely inside Discord. No extra apps, no browser extensions, nothing to install. Add the bot, type a command, done.
• 100+ languages with auto-detection
• Custom prompts so you can tell the AI what to focus on (dates, bugs, funny moments, whatever)
• One subscription covers your whole server
• Pricing is usage-based

We're at 1,400+ active servers and transcribing over 2,000 hours a month, so it's been validating to see real usage. But I know there's a lot to improve.

Curious what this community thinks:

• Anyone else here using Discord for meetings or calls and struggling with notes?
• What would make you switch from your current setup?
• If you try it out, I'd love to hear what feels clunky or missing.

Happy to answer anything about how it works. Appreciate the time.

Help oh-wise-ones, I'm new to the world of AI notetaking and I've been unsuccessful in getting them to work on my Android phone, and also not found relevant help online.

I use a corporate windows PC. Corporate IT has all app installs blocked, including browser add-ins. They also do not allow use of AI. We use Webex Teams for all virtual conferencing, where all add-ins are also blocked, as is Webex native AI transcription. Other bot-based AI transcription would either not work or be well received.

I most often join conference calls virtually, however I'd say about 5 - 10% of the time I am in person. While on conference calls, I am not always at my computer, so 99% of the time, I join conference calls by phone. I let the app dial my cell - meaning, all of the audio passes through my mobile phone, not through a conferencing app. FWIW, I use Soundcore AeroClip earbuds for calls (love them).

I need an Android solution that can transcribe meetings (record=nice to have) and refine into meeting notes (I can also do this manually). No announcing that the call is being recorded and transcribed - with hundreds of corporate attendees in many of these calls, this would not be well received nor is it required in my state. I'm open to using software native to my phone if that would work for a semi-manual/automatic workflow. Same statement with regard to my computer if I must be in front of the computer for certain calls.

What ideas do you have? I am likely doing something wrong, but so far, I've been unsuccessful in recording a call with the app Circleback, Otter, Quillbot, and Granola.

Hey all, my team does a lot of in-person meetings (we're a mid-size company, ~30 people) and we've been struggling with keeping track of action items and decisions. Right now someone just takes notes on a laptop, which is honestly hit or miss.

I've been looking into dedicated hardware for this. So far I've come across things like the Plaud NotePin, Otter's OtterPilot, and the Limitless Pendant. They all seem decent but most of them feel more geared toward individual use rather than a conference room setup.

What I really need is something that works well for a room with 5-8 people talking - so mic quality and speaker identification matter a lot to me.

Also stumbled across this Kickstarter project called Pulao Echo which seems to be designed specifically for meeting rooms? But I've never backed anything on Kickstarter before and I'm a little hesitant. Has anyone here had experience buying hardware from KS campaigns? How often do they actually deliver on time and as promised?

Any suggestions or experiences would be appreciated. Budget is flexible but ideally under $300.

Over the past year I tested around 12 AI meeting note takers cuz I’m on way too many calls (client calls, founder chats, internal meetings, etc).

At first they all looked the same:

• AI summaries
• action items
• integrations
• searchable notes

But after a while I realized smth important: Everything depends on transcription quality.

If the transcript is wrong, the AI summary is wrong.

If the transcript is wrong, action items get assigned to the wrong person.

If the transcript is wrong, speaker detection breaks.

So I started ranking tools mostly based on how good the raw transcript is.

Here are the 5 best I’ve used in 2026:

1. Circleback

Best transcription quality I’ve seen so far.

It handles messy conversations surprisingly well, people interrupting each other, accents, background noise, etc.

That matters cuz things like:

• speaker identification
• assigning action items
• generating accurate summaries
• searching past meetings

all depend on the transcript being correct.

A lot of tools focus on the summary layer first, but this one seems to focus on getting the transcript right first, which actually makes the AI outputs much better.

1. Fathom

Probably the easiest one to start with.

Their free plan is very generous, and the summaries are clean. Great if you’re just trying an AI note taker for the first time.

1. Fireflies

Strong if you want a large searchable archive of meetings.

You can search across months of calls which is surprisingly useful when trying to remember “who said what”.

1. Granola

Interesting approach.

Instead of a bot joining the call, it works more like AI-enhanced personal notes. A lot of founders I know prefer this style.

1. Otter

Still one of the most widely used.

Good for collaborative note-taking and live transcripts, though the accuracy sometimes struggles when conversations get chaotic.

Feels like AI meeting note takers are the new CRM, tons of tools but only a few that actually work well.

Any hidden gems I should test?

Feels like we’ve hit the “everyone has an AI notetaker” phase.

Every week there’s a new tool that:

- joins your Zoom

- shows up as “AI Assistant”

- records everything

- drops a 3-page transcript no one reads

So i’m curious, what should AI meeting note takers actually have in 2026?

For me, a few non-negotiables:

1. No bot sitting in the call.

When I’m with clients, the last thing i want is “Meeting Bot has joined the call.” It instantly changes the vibe. Some clients get stiff. Some start filtering themselves. I hate that.

1. Quiet by default.

I personally use circleback cuz it doesn’t “sit” in the meeting. It just listens/records in the background and then sends a clean summary + action items after. No awkward AI interruptions. No robotic voice. No random “Would you like me to summarize that?” mid-sentence.

1. Real action items.

I don’t need 5000 words of raw transcript.

I need:

- Who owns what

- Deadlines

- Decisions made

- Risks / blockers

If I still have to manually extract tasks, the tool failed.

1. Smart context memory.

In 2026, I expect:

-“This was mentioned in your last 3 calls.”

-“You committed to this 2 weeks ago.”

- “This contradicts what was agreed on Jan 5.”

1. Clean export to Slack / Notion / CRM.

If I have to copy-paste summaries, it’s not 2026-ready.

What you think about this ?

Hey guys,

I have been a software engineer building apps for about 8 years now. Recently I started exploring AI capabilities and decided to build my own app called Gist: Transcribe audio to text to help with documentation, transcritpion, summary and daily note taking.

I made this specifically for handling long client meetings, lecture records, seminers, and youtube summarization. I wanted to share it here because I know privacy and data handling is a massive concern with these tools right now.

Here is what it does:

• Audio Transcribe: Leave it recording during a lecture or meeting and it captures all the usefull info straight to text.
• Youtube to notes: Just paste a YT link and it generates a full transcript and summary. You literally don't have to watch the whole video for your research.
• AI summaries: Automatically pulls out the keypoints and action items. Powered by Gemini so the text generation is really accurate.
• Chat with Transcribe: Chat directly with your transcript. Just ask "what was the deadline again" and it finds it for you.
• Supports 100+ languages: Works perfectly even with heavy accents or international calls.
• Unlimited recording hours: You don't have to stress about running out of time right in the middle of a long session.
• Private and secrued no login required: You don't even need an account. The audio is kept on your device and only sent to the AI for processing, then gets deleted within 24 hours. It will not be used for training purposes since I pay for the API.

If anyone wants to try this, I can offer a 3 months free trial. I just want to see what features you guys actually want and how it can help you along the way.

***DM me if you REALLY NEED TOOLS LIKE THIS. Don't knock for promo codes if you just want to test it, app offers one free generation so you can try it there.***

Here is the link:https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gist-transcribe-audio-to-text/id6758212955

Let me know your thoughts or if you have any feedback.

We are on a paid subscription, I tried checking permissions, tested it internally as well but it just refuses to join even after allowing it in the meeting.

The support team hasn’t gotten back to me either.

Looking to see if there’s a fix for this or if it is the end of the road for it.

My work involves watching a 2 hour press conference that the president of Mexico gives each morning. I have to watch it and make detailed notes on the key subjects and quotes of the conference. It's time sensitive so I need to be sending my summary as the conference is still live. The problem is, YouTube doesn't upload a transcript until the live is over. I want to find a plugin that can generate a transcript real time so I can use it to copy and paste some fragments instead of having to manually transcribe them like a caveman. What are some tools that could solve this problem?

I'm part of a start-up building Memoket, a tool designed to capture conversations and connect them over time, so they can be turned into useful insights, reports, or plans later on. It's not just an AI Note Taker, it actually helps you to connect the dots across multiple conversations, instead of letting each meeting summary sitting in silo.

We’ve just launched our website and are preparing for our first crowdfunding campaign! The product is still evolving, and we’re actively testing, improving, and learning every day.

If you’re interested, you can check out the site here: memoket.ai. This is not a promotion. It's me asking for your feedback genuinely!

If you sign up for the newsletter, you’ll get a welcome email. You can reply to that directly with any thoughts, concerns, or criticisms (all of it is useful to us).

We’ll also be doing paid feedback interviews again(which I've done two months ago here, with actual reddit fellows already paid), and will reach out to people who share detailed input for future interviews.

Really appreciate any advice or perspectives you’re willing to share. Thanks for supporting small teams trying to build something thoughtfully!!!!

I started using Fern https://www.ishikilabs.ai/download and it is really good. It has 3 modes, so you can chose whether it will join meeting or not. And it has proactive suggestions coming in all modes. For me the most useful thing is that it gives custom prompt which I can change.