Oats Open-Source Meeting Notes — A Free Transcription Solution That Runs Locally
Oats is an MIT-licensed open-source meeting notes app from Ariso. In "Local" mode, recording, transcription and AI notes all run on your Mac. No login is needed
Oats is an MIT-licensed open-source meeting notes app from Ariso. In "Local" mode, recording, transcription and AI notes all run on your Mac. No login is needed, and no data is uploaded. However, the Parakeet speech model used in local mode officially lists mostly European languages, and Chinese is not on the list . For Chinese-language meetings, test the accuracy first, then choose local or cloud mode. This is the most important point when evaluating Oats. What Is Oats: An Open-Source Meeting Recorder in Your Menu Bar Oats is a meeting recording and note-taking tool that lives in the macOS menu bar. One click starts recording, and when the meeting ends it creates a transcript and structured notes. The source code is public in the ariso-ai/oats project on GitHub under the MIT license, so you can use, audit, modify or fork it. Oats does not send a bot into your meeting. It captures your computer's audio input and output directly. This means it can record Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, phone calls and even in-person conversations, and no "Notetaker Bot" shows up in the meeting's participant list. "Supports Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 14 or later; the Windows 11 x64 version is currently a release preview" (Source: ariso-ai/oats GitHub README) Tech stack: the Tauri v2 desktop framework, a Vue 3 frontend and a Rust backend. It uses FluidAudio for audio processing and MLX for machine learning inference on Apple Silicon. Pricing: the official page says it is free forever, with no per-seat fees, trial limits or paywalls. Two Backends: Ariso Cloud vs. Local Oats' biggest feature is that you can switch between two transcription backends. They differ in privacy and in how many features they offer. Which one to choose depends on how sensitive your meetings are and what language they are held in. Ariso Cloud Backend The cloud backend requires an Ariso account login. A cloud service transcribes in real time, and the audio is encrypted and stored in your account. This mo
FAQ
What Is Oats: An Open-Source Meeting Recorder in Your Menu Bar
Oats is a meeting recording and note-taking tool that lives in the macOS menu bar. One click starts recording, and when the meeting ends it creates a transcript and structured notes. The source code is public in the ariso-ai/oats project on GitHub under the MIT license, so you can use, audit, modify or fork it. Oats does not send a bot into your meeting. It captures your computer's audio input and output directly. This means it can record Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, phone calls and even
What You Get After a Meeting
After each meeting, Oats produces four outputs: a quick summary, full meeting minutes, action items listed by person, and a meeting quality score based on the conversation. Version 0.23 also adds a Todos tab for tracking all action items across meetings. Plain Markdown storage : notes can be saved straight into a chosen Obsidian vault, and action items are converted to Obsidian Tasks format. Searchable recording library : all past meetings are kept in one place and can be searched by keyword. No
Who Should Use Oats
Oats' local mode fits best when "meeting content must not leave the device, and the main language is English or a European language." These three groups get the most out of it: Consultants, lawyers and healthcare workers who handle sensitive data : recordings are not uploaded, so there are no compliance issues with third-party data processing. Engineers and PMs who hold English meetings with overseas teams : Parakeet's English accuracy and speed have been validated on public benchmarks. Heavy Ob
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Reviewed and verified by FeiYueh · Last verified 2026-10-18. Independently maintained — not AI-generated boilerplate.
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