Meeting notes for Mac with nobody extra in the call.
Joey captures the meeting from your own machine while you are in it, then hands you what was said, what was decided and what was promised — filed to the client it belongs to.
Joey is an AI meeting notes app for macOS that captures from your own Mac instead of sending a bot into the call. You start it, it listens while you are in the meeting, and afterwards it produces what was said, what was decided and what was promised — filed to the right client and ready to draft the follow-up email.
What are AI meeting notes without a bot?
Most AI notetakers work by joining the call. You connect your calendar, and at the appointed minute a participant called something like "Otter.ai Notetaker" or "Fireflies" appears in the waiting room, is admitted, and records the meeting from the platform's own stream. Zoom's built-in AI Companion is the same idea without the extra guest — the recording happens on the platform side rather than on your machine. Afterwards you get a transcript, a summary and a list of action items in that tool's web app.
There are good reasons this design won. A bot captures meetings you do not attend, which matters if you run a team and want coverage of calls you were not on. It works the same whether your colleagues are on Windows, a Chromebook or a phone. An admin can roll it out across an organisation and enforce a retention policy from one console. And because it records from the platform, it gets clean per-speaker audio without touching anyone's laptop. If those are the problems you have, a bot-based notetaker is the correct tool and you should use one.
The costs are equally real. The bot is visible to everyone in the room, and clients notice — a third-party recorder in a sales call changes the temperature of the conversation, and some organisations refuse to admit one at all. It only covers calls that live on a supported platform with a calendar invite, which excludes the coffee, the corridor, the phone call and the meeting that got moved to somebody's kitchen table. And the notes end up in a fourth web app: another tab, another search box, another archive that knows nothing about the rest of your work.
Joey captures from your Mac instead. Because it works from your own machine, there is nothing for the other side to admit and nothing to notice — which makes telling people you are taking notes your job rather than the software's, and we are firm about that below. It works for anything you can hear, so an in-person meeting is the same operation as a video call. And the notes do not land in a separate archive: they become part of the same local brain as your dictations, screenshots and notes, linked to the people and projects discussed, so the meeting is findable months later next to everything else about that client.
How to take AI meeting notes without a bot
Four steps. The second one is the one people skip, and it is the one that matters.
- Open Joey before the meeting startsDownload Stilou, open the Meetings tab, and grant microphone and screen-audio permission the first time. Joey does not sit in your calendar waiting to launch itself — you open it because a meeting is about to happen.
- Tell the room you are taking notesSay it out loud, or put it in the invite. It takes four seconds, it is the decent thing to do, and in many places recording a conversation without telling the other people is against the law. Nobody has ever objected to "I'm taking AI notes, shout if you'd rather I didn't".
- Press start, then go back to the conversationCapture begins when you press it and not before. Joey follows the meeting audio from your own Mac — a Zoom, Meet or Teams call, a phone on speaker, or a room full of people — while you do the actual talking.
- Stop, and read what came outWhen the meeting ends you stop capture. Joey produces the recap, the decisions, and the follow-ups with owners against them, files it to the client and project it belongs to, and offers a follow-up email drafted in your own voice.
Tip. Say the names. Joey files a meeting by what was discussed in it, so a call where someone says "right, so for the Henderson rollout" lands itself correctly, while forty minutes of "the project" needs you to point it in the right direction afterwards.
What Joey does that a transcript does not
Nothing joins your call.
There is no extra participant in the list, no waiting-room admission, and nothing for a client to ask about. Capture happens on your Mac, which means it also works on calls where a third-party recorder would never be allowed in.
Works for meetings that are not on a screen.
A table of people, a phone on speaker, a workshop, a corridor conversation you turned into a decision. If your Mac can hear it and you have started capture, Joey handles it the same way it handles a video call.
Three different things, kept separate.
A transcript tells you what was said. Joey separates the decisions from the discussion and pulls out the commitments with the person who made them, because "we agreed X" and "someone mentioned X" are not the same fact.
The meeting lands on the right client.
No folder to pick and no title to type. Joey routes the meeting to the client and project it was about, and links it to the people in it, so it sits with the rest of that relationship rather than in a chronological pile.
The email is written before you are back at your desk.
Joey can draft the recap and the follow-up email in your own voice, with the decisions and the promises already in it. You read it, change what you want, and send it — the part of a meeting that most often does not happen.
The meeting is not stranded in a notes app.
Every meeting becomes dots in your local brain alongside your notes, dictations, screenshots and connected Slack and Gmail threads. Ask about a client six weeks later and the call is part of the answer, not a separate archive you have to remember to search.
Joey vs Granola vs bot notetakers
Three different designs, and the right one genuinely depends on whether you were in the meeting.
| Joey | Granola | Bot notetakers | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A bot joins the call | No | No | Yes, as a visible participant |
| In-person meetings | Yes, if your Mac can hear it | Yes | No, calls only |
| Meetings you did not attend | No | No | Yes — this is what they are for |
| Platform coverage | Anything audible on your Mac | Mac app | Any platform the bot can join |
| Capture starts | When you press start | When you start a note | Automatically, from your calendar |
| Where the notes live | Your local brain, with everything else | In the notes app | In that tool's web app |
| Linked to your other work | People, projects, threads, past captures | Within its own notes | Within its own workspace |
| Follow-up email in your voice | Yes, via your Voiceprint | Summaries and templates | Summaries and templates |
| Works with no network | Yes, in Private mode | Needs a connection | Needs a connection |
| Org-wide rollout and retention policy | No — a personal tool | Team plans | Yes, admin-managed |
| Price | Free tier, paid plans for more | Free tier, paid plans | Free tier, paid plans |
Do not switch to Joey if you need coverage of meetings you are not in, or if your company requires centrally administered recording with a retention policy — that is exactly what bot notetakers are built for and Joey does none of it. Joey is a personal tool for the meetings you personally attend. If your objection to the current setup is the bot in the call, or the fact that your meeting notes live in a fourth app that knows nothing about the rest of your work, that is where it wins.
Consent, and what actually happens to a meeting
Tell the other people in the room. It is the right thing to do, it costs you one sentence, and in many jurisdictions capturing a conversation without informing the other participants is illegal — the rules vary by country and by state, and it is on you to know which apply to your meeting. Stilou will not do this for you, and we are not offering you a compliance guarantee: what we can promise is that nothing happens without you, so the decision is always yours to make out loud.
Stilou never joins a call and never records on its own. There is no calendar bot, no background listening, and no capture that starts because a meeting appeared in your diary. Joey listens when you press start and stops when you press stop, and while it is running you can see that it is running.
No recording is retained. Audio becomes text, the audio is discarded, and what persists is the notes — as files in a local index on your own disk. In Private mode the whole thing runs on your Mac and nothing leaves it. In Connected mode, only the text a specific step needs is sent to a hosted frontier model, and if you bring your own key it goes from your Mac straight to your provider rather than through our relay.
Nothing from your meetings is used to train a model, by us or by the providers. If you already run Read.ai, its meeting content can flow into the same brain through the connector, which you switch on yourself and can switch off the same way. Calendar is coming, not shipped.
Frequently asked questions
Does Joey join my call as a bot?
No. Nothing joins your meeting. There is no extra participant, no waiting-room request and nothing for anyone else in the call to see. Joey captures from your own Mac while you are in the meeting, which is why it also works on calls where a third-party recorder would not be admitted.
Do I need to tell the other people that I am taking AI notes?
Yes — tell them. Beyond being the decent thing to do, capturing a conversation without informing the other participants is illegal in many places, and the rules differ by country and by state. Stilou does not and cannot handle that for you, and we make no compliance guarantee; what we guarantee is that capture only ever starts because you started it, so there is always a moment to say so.
Does it work for in-person meetings, not just video calls?
Yes. Anything your Mac can hear works the same way — a table of people, a phone on speaker, a workshop. This is the main thing bot-based notetakers cannot do, because there is no call for a bot to join.
Which meeting platforms does it work with?
All of them, because it does not integrate with any of them. Joey captures audio on your Mac rather than connecting to Zoom, Google Meet or Teams as an app, so there is no supported-platforms list and nothing breaks when a platform changes its API.
Is Joey always listening in the background?
No. Joey captures only while you have started it, and stops when you stop it. There is no ambient or continuous recording, nothing triggered by your calendar, and no microphone use outside a capture you began yourself.
Is the audio recorded or stored anywhere?
No recording is retained. Audio is turned into text and then discarded; what persists is the notes, stored locally on your Mac. In Private mode nothing leaves the machine at all. Nothing from your meetings is used to train a model, by us or by the providers.
How is this different from Granola?
Granola also avoids the bot, and if you like it you already agree with half of our argument. The difference is what happens after the meeting: Granola's notes live in Granola, while Joey's land in the same local brain as your notes, dictations, screenshots and connected Slack and Gmail threads, linked to the client and the people involved. It also drafts the follow-up in your own voice rather than in a template.
What do I need to run it?
A Mac running a current version of macOS, microphone permission, and screen-audio permission so it can hear the other side of a call. On-device processing in Private mode runs best on Apple silicon, and disk space for the local index.