Thoth
A native Mac app built by one developer that records and summarizes meetings entirely on your machine — useful if you handle confidential conversations or just find real-time transcripts help you follow along.
🔗 Visit Thoth
Description
Built specifically for people who can't or won't send meeting audio to a third-party server — lawyers, therapists, anyone under an NDA — Thoth records and transcribes on your own Mac using local Whisper and LLM models, with no account, no cloud upload and no vendor database of your conversations anywhere. It also mentions accessibility use cases: live transcripts can help people with ADHD, autism or auditory processing differences follow a conversation in real time.
Thoth records mic and system audio on separate channels (so you can capture Zoom, Teams, Google Meet or Webex directly via macOS Core Audio without extra drivers), provides real-time transcription with color-coded speaker diarization, offers five local AI models for on-device summarization plus on-device redaction of names, emails and phone numbers, and supports 99 languages. It requires Apple Silicon with 8GB+ unified memory and macOS Tahoe, and it's built solo by a laser physicist turned indie developer, with an iOS/iPad beta available via TestFlight.
💬 Our review
The short version: Thoth is a genuinely private, one-time-cheap Mac transcription app, but the developer's own benchmarks admit local AI summaries (~5/10) are noticeably weaker than cloud AI (~8.7/10) — you're trading summary quality for privacy, and it's worth going in eyes-open about that.
Against QuickQuill (a similar on-device-only Mac notetaker), Thoth differentiates on language coverage (99 languages vs a narrower set) and built-in redaction of names/emails/phone numbers, which matters specifically for regulated professions handling sensitive conversations. The pricing is aggressively cheap — $6.99/month or a $49.99 lifetime option undercuts most cloud notetakers by a wide margin. The tradeoff the developer is transparent about is quality: on-device models genuinely lag cloud LLMs for summarization, so if the summary itself needs to be publication-ready rather than a rough aid, expect more editing. Strong pick for confidentiality-sensitive professionals who need transcription/summary help and are fine polishing the output; skip it if you need the sharpest possible AI summary and don't have a hard privacy requirement.
💰 Pricing
📊 Global score
🤖 AI-enriched data
Free : jusqu'à 30 min micro / 15 min audio système, 10 améliorations IA/mois. Pro : $6.99/mois, $39.99/an, ou $49.99 à vie.
Pros
100% sur l'appareil — aucun compte, aucune donnée envoyée dans le cloud
Rédaction automatique des noms/emails/téléphones directement sur l'appareil
Support de 99 langues, largement supérieur à la concurrence privacy-first
Option $49.99 à vie très compétitive face aux abonnements mensuels concurrents
Cons
Qualité des résumés IA locale nettement inférieure au cloud (~5/10 vs ~8.7/10 selon le développeur lui-même)
Mac uniquement, nécessite Apple Silicon et macOS Tahoe
Développé par une seule personne, risque de continuité
Palier gratuit limité (30 min micro/15 min système)