LokalBot
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Meetily is one of the most popular open-source meeting notetakers, with a large community behind it. Like LokalBot, it records your microphone and system audio without a bot, transcribes on your device, and can write summaries with a built-in local model. Its free Community Edition is MIT-licensed and runs on macOS and Windows. A paid Pro edition, built on a separate codebase, adds speaker separation, meeting detection, and AI-tool connections. LokalBot ships every feature in one free GPLv3 app, and covers more of your workday than meetings.
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Side by side
| Feature | LokalBot | Meetily |
|---|---|---|
| Meeting capture | Bot-free microphone + system audio; detects meetings and, on a fresh install, asks before recording | Bot-free microphone + system audio; automatic meeting detection is Pro only |
| Transcription | On your Mac — Qwen3-ASR by default, with Parakeet, Granite Speech, and Whisper as alternatives | On your device — Whisper or Parakeet |
| Summaries | llama.cpp built in — works with no keys and no setup | Built-in Qwen 3.5 models, Ollama, or your own Claude, OpenAI, Groq, or OpenRouter key |
| Speaker separation | On your Mac, on by default | Pro only |
| Ask across meetings | Cited answers that link back to the transcript and audio | Not yet — listed as coming soon for Pro |
| Connect AI tools | Read-only CLI and MCP server, off until you enable Agent Access | Pro only — MCP, webhooks, and a CLI |
| Transcribe existing files | No — LokalBot transcribes what it records | Imports audio and video files, and can re-transcribe them |
| Usage analytics | None — no analytics service or telemetry | Optional; off by default on new installs |
| System-wide dictation | Hold ⌥ Space in any app | No |
| Day timeline | App and window activity by default; screen text and encrypted screenshots are opt-in and deleted after 14 days | No |
| Writing autocomplete | Cotyping, in almost any app | No |
| License | GPLv3 — every feature in one open codebase | Community: MIT · Pro: a separate commercial codebase |
| Price | Free | Community free · Pro $10 per user/mo, billed annually · Enterprise custom |
| Platforms | macOS 15+ on Apple Silicon | macOS on Apple Silicon and Windows; Linux builds from source |
Verdict
A popular open-source notetaker with a big community.
Every feature free, and more than meetings.
Questions
Its Community Edition is, under the MIT license, and it does the core job well: bot-free capture, on-device transcription, and local summaries. Speaker separation, automatic meeting detection, advanced exports, and MCP access are in Meetily Pro, a paid edition built on a separate codebase. LokalBot has one codebase, and everything in it is free.
Partly. Both can transcribe with Parakeet or Whisper, and both offer Qwen 3.5 for local summaries. LokalBot defaults to Qwen3-ASR for transcription and also offers Granite Speech; the benchmarks page compares several of these models on the same test set.
Meetily. LokalBot is a native Mac app for Apple Silicon and macOS 15 or later, built around macOS audio capture, Accessibility, and on-device models. If you work on Windows, Meetily is the better fit.
Download
Free and open source. Models download on first use; built-in inference then works offline.
Download for macOS.dmg installer · brew install --cask stevyhacker/tap/lokalbot · all releases and notes
Meetily is a trademark of its owner; LokalBot is not affiliated with or endorsed by it. Details are based on its public site, pricing, and repository as of October 2026 and may change — if something here is wrong or out of date, open an issue and we'll fix it.