oats for MAC
Free, open-source meeting recorder for Mac: live transcription, speaker labels and automatic notes, in the cloud or fully offline on your Mac.
oats Overview
oats is a meeting notes app that lives in the Mac menu bar. You hit record, carry on with your meeting, and when you stop it hands you a transcript and a tidy Markdown summary of what was said. There is no bot to invite into the call and no browser tab to keep open: recording, pausing and stopping all happen from the menu bar.
You choose where the work happens. The default Ariso backend is free and runs in the cloud: you sign in, and your audio is transcribed in real time, with support for several languages and sharing to the web. The Local backend needs no account and works fully offline: recording, transcription on the Apple Neural Engine, speaker labels and notes written by an on-device language model all stay on your Mac, after a one-time download of the speech and language models. Local mode does not support multiple languages. oats is made by Ariso and is free and open source under the MIT license. It is signed and notarized by Apple, updates itself, and runs on Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 14.4 or later; Intel Macs are not supported. A Windows 11 version is in preview.
Key Features
oats turns your meetings into notes without getting in the way.
- One-click recording: start, pause and stop from the menu bar.
- Real-time transcription: the transcript streams in as people talk.
- Speaker labels: see who said what.
- Automatic notes: a clean Markdown summary for every recording.
- Fully offline mode: no login, nothing leaves your Mac.
- Library: every recording, transcript and note in one place.
- Sharing: the macOS share sheet, or a web link with the Ariso backend.
- Custom AI endpoint: write notes with your own OpenAI-compatible model.
What’s New in Version 0.26.1
oats 0.26.1 brings two small fixes.
- The pending-uploads box is hidden when you use the Local backend.
- Uploaded recordings are tagged with "oats" as their source.
oats FAQ
Is oats free?
Yes. oats is free and open source under the MIT license, and both the Ariso cloud backend and the Local backend are free.
Do I need an account?
Only for the default Ariso cloud backend. The Local backend needs no login.
Can oats work completely offline?
Yes. Switch the backend to Local and download the speech and language models once in Settings. After that, recording, transcription and notes all run on your Mac and nothing is uploaded.
Which Macs does oats run on?
Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 14.4 or later. Intel Macs are not supported.
Does oats need a meeting bot?
No. It records from the menu bar, so there is no bot to invite into the call.
What files does oats save?
In Local mode each meeting is stored under ~/.ariso/recordings/ as recording.mp3, transcript.md and ari-note.md.
Does oats support languages other than English?
The Ariso cloud backend supports multiple languages. The Local backend does not.
Can I use my own AI model for the notes?
Yes. Settings can point oats to a custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint, with an optional API key stored in the macOS Keychain.
Is oats signed by Apple?
Yes. The app is code-signed and notarized by Apple and updates itself.
Where does the oats download on oats.FULLMAC.app come from?
The download button leads to the official oats releases on GitHub at https://github.com/ariso-ai/oats/releases/latest. oats.FULLMAC.app does not change or repackage the app.
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