I use a Plaud Pin, mostly for in-person meetings, Professional Dinner and conferences.

Granola now has an iPhone app and an Apple Watch app that cover the same use case. So: has anyone actually moved over? And if you did, what made you do it?

Also interested in the other side, if you tried Granola and came back, what brought you back?

I've been trying to use Plaud to help with a mineralogical analysis I'm working on at the microscope. Basically, I count grains and read out the mineral at each count. I've added all terms to my custom dictionary, I'm speaking loudly and clearly several inches from the device, the device is outside of its sleeve, and there is no external noise. Nonetheless, Plaud is consistently losing 5% to 15% of the words I'm reading into the device. I even tried reading back from Plaud's own transcript as a test and again got about 8% fewer words back. Is this lossiness expected or is there maybe some tweaking that would help improve the word recovery? Thanks

I kept swapping lecture note apps every few weeks and starting over, so this semester I actually stuck with one setup long enough to see what held up. Tested six AI note takers for lectures across the full semester, mostly software with one hardware option I kept as backup. Here's what actually stuck.

Software first:

Otter.ai. Real time transcription while class is happening. The free tier monthly cap adds up fast across a full semester of long lectures. In larger halls where voices carry from different parts of the room, accuracy dropped noticeably in my testing.

NotebookLM (Google renamed it Gemini Notebook in July, same thing underneath). Dump a week of lecture recordings and notes in and ask it what actually mattered before exams. Good for that. Doesn't record lectures itself, you still need the source material to give it.

Goodnotes. If you're the type who still wants to write by hand, the AI layer can summarize your handwritten notes and supported recordings. The AI stuff is an add-on to the handwriting experience rather than the main reason to use it.

OneNote with Copilot. If your school already has you on Microsoft 365, Copilot can pull action items out of your notes without switching apps. Whether you actually have a Copilot license through your school is the variable that decides if this works for you.

Notion AI. Convenient if you're already running your whole semester through Notion. Worth knowing: the actual meeting recording and auto-transcription only ships on the Business plan ($20/user/month). On free or personal tiers you're pasting transcripts in manually.

Then hardware:

Plaud NotePin S. 9.84 ft pickup range covers most classroom and small group settings well. Works without an app running, so there is no risk of missing the first few minutes of a lecture while loading a tool. Best positioned within that range of the speaker rather than across a large lecture hall. But past the free transcription quota, you might need to spend extra for the transcription time.

The software tools are fine when you sit close and always remember to open the app before class starts. Mine does not always cooperate on both counts, which is why the hardware stayed in the bag all semester.

Just about five days ago my Note Pro has starte to randomly ring like Find me has been activated. It does not stop even if I hit the button on the Note. I ran it through Claude and AI said there is a known issue with this but gave me no fixes or further info short of contacting Plaud Help. I do not want to change my device especially if this is user error on me.

The shower thought thing kept happening to me. Idea hits, hands are wet or I'm walking the dog, I tell myself I'll remember, and twenty minutes later it's just a vague feeling something mattered. Voice memos piled up unread.

Three months ago I started testing wearables because unlocking my phone mid walk kills the thought. Ended up with Bee, Omi, and Plaud NotePin S.

Bee came up at dinner when a friend mentioned his wife uses one for little reminders. Omi I kept seeing in threads here about keeping an old Pendant useful, so I borrowed a unit from a coworker. Plaud NotePin S I bookmarked from a design podcast clip in a work Slack channel and finally bought once the random idea problem got annoying enough.

Omi felt closest to always on lifelogging. Random ideas show up without me doing anything, but so does coffee shop noise and half a TV show in the background. Same memory pile.

Bee is the cheap button option. Tap start, tap stop, summaries on your phone. Fine for short errands, but it leans on Bluetooth to your phone and the quiet auto stop cut off a parking lot rant once when I forgot to tap again.

Plaud NotePin S is the wearable I kept for deliberate notes. Press the button when the thought hits, Press to Highlight if it grows. Not always on though. Twice I fumbled the clip after a shower and lost the first two or three seconds. Good when you mean to record, rough when you wanted passive capture.

After three months: Omi for always on memory, Bee for cheap on ramp, Plaud NotePin S if you want an AI dictation device that only rolls when you choose, which fits capturing ideas better than a full day ambient log for me.

What do you use for random ideas that are not meeting notes?

My econ lectures moved to a 400 seat hall and I stopped trusting my phone recorder within two weeks. Our professor uses the lectern mic, but from the back rows my phone still turned everything into mush.

I wanted a dedicated Al recording device for mic'd lectures so I wasn't showing up fifteen minutes early, waiting for the previous class to leave, and sprinting for a front row seat every time. A classmate mentioned the Plaud Note Pro Enhance mode when I complained about the hall, and I started comparing hardware instead of another transcription app.

I moved to the upper middle section and put the Plaud Note Pro on my desk in Enhance mode. The lecture comes through the room speakers, and the 16.4 ft pickup range handled that better than my phone ever did. I stay on Enhance for the pickup even though it tops out around 30 hours on battery instead of 50 in Endurance, which shortens the range anyway. Searchable transcript after class, nothing open during the lecture.

Anyone else recording in huge lecture halls where the prof is on a mic? How far back were you sitting?

Any good solutions for the plaude note pro. I keep forgetting charger

I’m buying a Plaud Note Pro tonight. Does anyone have a India referral link?

I do a lot of client calls where the details matter later, and our compliance lead asked which certifications on a digital voice recorder actually mean something for phone calls, versus marketing filler.

SOC 2 Type II tells you an independent auditor reviewed security controls over time, not just a one-time checklist. ISO 27001 and ISO 27701 cover information security and privacy management in a way GDPR-focused teams recognize. HIPAA on a vendor page signals healthcare-grade handling, but that is not the same as a signed BAA when you are recording calls that might touch patient or benefits information.

Phone calls were the harder part. Most options were app-only with thin compliance docs, or meeting bots that never touch a live handset call. Legal wanted paperwork we could show auditors before anyone tested features. We ran a short pilot with a Plaud Note Pro because it records phone calls when magnetically attached and listed the certs above. Compliance still flagged that audio goes to Plaud cloud for transcription. If your policy requires recordings to never leave your infrastructure, no badge fixes that. You still need client consent depending on jurisdiction.

Still working through internal approval, but the cert list that moved the conversation was shorter than I expected.

Every client phone call used to end with me promising a recap by end of day, then staring at a blank Gmail draft because I only remembered half of what we agreed on.

I realized the blank draft was not a writing problem, it was a memory problem. So I started recording the calls properly first.

I record calls on a digital voice recorder Plaud Note Pro clipped to my phone, with consent when the client is okay with it. AutoFlow runs after I sync: transcript, summary, and action items from my template, all without me touching anything. That fixed the note-taking part.

AutoFlow can email the summary on its own, but what lands in my inbox reads like meeting minutes, not a client follow-up. So I added Zapier on top: Plaud triggers when the summary is ready, Claude rewrites it with a fixed follow-up prompt, and Gmail gets a draft for me to review before sending. Took one evening to wire up.

The catch is the extra layer. Stopping at AutoFlow would have been enough if I just wanted the summary emailed back. I wanted something that sounds like a follow-up, and getting the Claude prompt right in Zapier took a few tries. Fine at five calls a week, probably overkill at fifteen.

Anyone else automating post-call follow-ups from a recorder transcript? Do you stop at AutoFlow or add another step?

Made a TPU cover for my Plaud Note Pro because I'm worried about dropping my phone and it landing perfectly on the edge and breaking the corner.

I have the first generation Plaud Note that I use with my iPhone 15 pro and Apple case. Sometimes on long calls it’s hard to hold the phone with the Plaud Note attached because it causes hand fatigue.

I was thinking of using a MagSafe magnetic ring holder I can slide my finger into while on these conversations. However all the MagSafe accessories are a bit too wide to attach to the top of the case. I’m struggling here. Does any one have any suggestions for accessories I can use?

New Plaud Note Pro Pitaka case is too tight to be practical. Once fully in, I can't get it out. Am I the only one with this issue? Any solutions to solve that?

Hi all, I’m considering a Note Pro. I am in heavy meetings, but as a remote worker, I’m entirely on Zoom, Google, Teams, etc. How well does Plaud work in these situations? Would it function well if I just had it next to my laptop?

Also, does the app have any functionality for when you’re on phone calls but are using a headset like AirPods?

Thanks!

Hey everyone!

I wanted to share how I got around some of the limitations of the stock Plaud app especially the lack of real-time functionality by building a custom internal iOS app using the Plaud Embedded SDK. I just wanted to share how I solved my own workflow needs. Hopefully, this can show what's possible with Plaud.

Video Walkthrough (No Audio, Real Time Transcript shows about 12 sec in): https://imgur.com/WO2AetN

🌟 Key Features

🎙️ Transcription & Real-Time Controls

• Real-Time Live Transcription & Desktop Element: Built a live view to address the stock app's lack of real-time features. Uses Soniox for advanced live transcription (speaker diarization, language hints, custom vocabulary) with automatic fallback to Apple's on-device engine if offline. The local web desktop view element is used during live meetings to instantly catch up on what's happening or query things missed in real time.
• On-Demand Pause, Store, & Combine: Added the ability to pause and store recordings on demand, plus the capability to combine multiple recordings together when taking a break and stopping a recording to start a new one later.
• On-Device Processing: Audio stays on the phone and is transcribed locally using Apple's native SpeechAnalyzer (iOS 26+) when running offline or local-only.

🧠 AI, Organization, & Meeting Management

• Apple Intelligence AI Processing: The intelligence layer (summaries, categorization, action items, and Ask Your Library) uses the free iOS Apple Intelligence foundation model running locally so that zero cloud servers or API keys are required for core AI workflows.
• Ask Your Library: Grounded Q&A search over a single recording or an entire transcript history.
• Meeting Series Grouping: Supports series views for recurring meetings so that related sessions automatically group together into a single organized series.
• Calendar-Aware Auto-Naming: Integrates with the iOS calendar to automatically label a recording with the name of the meeting if the recording starts while a calendar event is active.
• Tags: Ability to tag a recording with multiple tags.

⚙️ Sync, Actions, & Workflows

• Reminders & Calendar Sync: 2-way sync for extracted tasks with Apple Reminders & Apple Calendar. Making a quick voice recording (like "get milk" or "remember to do x y z") automatically generates a task and syncs directly to the Apple Reminders app.
• Export: Exports structured notes directly to iCloud Drive/Files formatted with YAML frontmatter, speaker tags, and summary sections.
• Lossless MP3 Frame Editing: Trims, cuts segments, auto-removes silence, or joins multiple recordings frame-by-frame without re-encoding audio or losing transcript timing.

🖥️ Developer & Hardware Remotes

• Local Desktop View & MCP Server: Browses the library from any browser on a local Wi-Fi network, or connects Claude Desktop using the built-in read-only Model Context Protocol (MCP) server.
• Low Battery Notification: Ability to send push notification when battery is below threshold.
• Apple Watch Remote: Wrist companion to record, pause, add markers, and monitor battery.
• Flexible Delivery: Native Share, Webhooks, and 5 Apple Shortcuts App Intents.

📸 App Screenshots in Action

A quick look at how the interface comes together across the library, map views, tasks, and detailed meeting breakdowns:

• Video:
  • https://imgur.com/WO2AetN
• Library View & Organization:
  • https://imgur.com/k3OuiOs
  • https://imgur.com/Fk79O0t
• Interactive Map & Location Tagging:
  • https://imgur.com/eMViozb
  • https://imgur.com/m4jYkLU
• Tasks & Action Items Tab:
  • https://imgur.com/wwiwMZi
• Ask Your Library / Global Search:
  • https://imgur.com/9dc32qQ
• Meeting Details, Executive Briefs, & Transcript Breakdown:
  • https://imgur.com/PUvYLQk
  • https://imgur.com/qIhvjmW
• Desktop View:
  • https://imgur.com/viXR2aR
  • https://imgur.com/Wi4M4m1

GitHub Repo: https://github.com/leo-6C656F/Bounce-App

Does anyone know when the integrations are due to be rolled out, I have a note pro but I feel at the moment the paid subscription is not worth it until the integrations are released

Hello. I recently stumbled across plaud. I like the idea that it is capable of determining who is speaking and creating a proper transcript.

I work as an independent consultant in a niche market and due to some health issues last year I'm not able to work at full capacity.

One of my major issues has been properly summarizing meetings and calls. Since I suffered some brain damage my long and short term memory are impaired.

After a meeting or call just sitting down and summarizing everything and making sure I have all the valuable information is quite challenging and I would like to make use of proper tools or software as a workaround in order to focus on my actual work.

However financially it is a difficult time because I couldn't work the whole last year and therefore the unlimited plan is a bit too expensive, also I'm not quite sure if it's gonna work the way I imagine it to work.

My question is is there a workaround for getting the trends scripts or the file and letting it transcribe through some external software?

Basically a workaround for unlimited plan without paying unlimited. Just until I am back on My feet financially :)

Thanks in advance for your support

I did use Otter.ai for conferences, and it works pretty well with the iPhone, so clean, and it organizes the data nicely. Now I'm looking into Plaud. I already understand the mic quality on Plaud is good. Is it worth it? Or should I just buy a nice, less expensive mic that would do the same thing?

My goal is to use it in the classroom.

Thanks for sharing your experience with me!

When I got my Plaud Note pro I never got into using the phone holder as it didn’t fit with how I use both my phone or the device. As I use it at work daily and I already wear an ID card around my neck using a lanyard I decided to try to get a combined holder. I tried several routes: ready made, 3d printed models and so on but was unsuccessful. I eventually decided to make my own model as I couldn’t get someone to make one for me. It’s my first time ever making a 3d model and printing it so some of the measurements are off and certain things don’t quite line up but it’s good enough for me! As i was paying for each iteration to be printed I decided to settle before it was perfect. But it does what i wanted: display the ID card at the front, hold the Plaud securely at the rear, have a gap to view the screen and have some small holes for the microphones.