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Free Meeting Transcriber

Transcription and summaries

Free Meeting Transcriber has two separate model settings:

  • Transcription turns audio into text on your Mac.
  • Intelligence writes summaries and note titles. It can use a local model or a provider you configure with your own API key.

Open Settings → Transcription or Settings → Intelligence to change the active model.

Transcription

Section titled “Transcription”

Transcription is on-device only. Download a model from Settings → Transcription, wait for it to finish, then select it under Model being used.

A model marked Live can show text during a meeting. The streaming model supports English. If your language selection is not supported live, the app falls back to transcription after the recording. Models marked After recording always wait until you stop.

A downloaded on-device Soniqo model also powers transcription from the terminal: fmtr transcribe MEETING_ID uses it without opening the app. The CLI never downloads models itself, so complete the download here first. See the CLI reference.

Intelligence

Section titled “Intelligence”

You do not need an Intelligence model to record, write notes, or transcribe. Configure one only if you want generated summaries and titles.

For a hosted provider, open Configure Providers, add the API key, then select one of that provider’s models. The API key is stored in the macOS login Keychain.

You can also run summaries locally with LM Studio or Ollama.

LM Studio

Section titled “LM Studio”
  1. Install LM Studio and download a model.
  2. Start its local server on port 1234 and enable CORS.
  3. Open Settings → Intelligence → Configure Providers → LM Studio.
  4. Select the LM Studio model under Model being used.

Ollama

Section titled “Ollama”

  1. Install Ollama.

  2. Start it and download a model:

    Terminal window
    ollama serve
    ollama pull llama3.2

  3. Open Settings → Intelligence → Configure Providers → Ollama.

  4. Select the Ollama model under Model being used.

What leaves your Mac

Section titled “What leaves your Mac”

Recording and transcription stay local. A local Intelligence provider also keeps summary processing on your Mac. If you select a remote Intelligence provider, the app sends the prompt and meeting context needed for that request to that provider.

See Data, privacy, and retention for more detail.