Required hardware and software
- Mac: Apple Silicon — M1 or later.
- Operating system: macOS 15.0 or later.
- Disk: room for the app, recordings, and selected models.
- Internet: required for the initial app and model downloads; optional for the built-in workflow after setup.
Intel Macs are not supported. LokalBot is built around Apple Silicon acceleration, Core Audio process taps, the Neural Engine, MLX, and Metal rather than treating macOS as one target among many.
How much memory do you need?
The application runs across the supported Apple Silicon range, but local language-model choice changes the practical memory requirement. Compact built-in models start around 0.53–1.28 GB. Several balanced summary and cotyping models recommend 16 GB of unified memory. The largest long-meeting models in the catalog are roughly 16.8–17.73 GB on disk and target Macs with 32 GB or more.
You do not need the largest model to record or transcribe a meeting. Choose a compact speech model and a smaller summarizer first, then move up only if the quality gain is worthwhile on your hardware.
Plan disk space by workflow
- Compact setup: a roughly 0.7 GB Qwen3-ASR speech model plus a small 0.53–1.28 GB language model.
- Broader transcription: Whisper large-v3 turbo is roughly 1.6 GB; Qwen3-ASR 1.7B is roughly 3.2 GB.
- Quality-focused summaries: larger catalog choices add about 5–18 GB each.
- Meetings: audio, transcripts, and optional screenshots use additional space over time.
These numbers describe model downloads and may change when publishers update packaging. LokalBot lets you choose rather than downloading every model.
macOS permissions
Grant only the permissions for features you intend to use:
- Microphone records your voice.
- System audio / Screen Recording enables the selected meeting-app audio capture and opt-in screen context.
- Calendar helps detect and title scheduled meetings.
- Accessibility supports meeting detection, Cotyping, dictation insertion, and approved agent interaction.
Manual recording is the default on a fresh install. Screenshots are separately opt-in, encrypted at rest, and deleted after 14 days by default.
Before an important meeting
- Install the latest release and finish the selected model downloads.
- Confirm the required macOS permissions in System Settings.
- Make a short recording in the actual meeting application.
- Play back both the microphone and system-audio tracks.
- Process the recording once, offline if offline use matters.