Memento records and transcribes your conversations on your Mac, labels who spoke, and finds any moment word for word. Free, with every feature included.
The deadline, the number, the exact words someone used. Memento keeps a searchable transcript of every conversation, with who said what, ready to play back.
Typing notes, half listening
Memento writes down every word as it’s said, and knows when someone new starts talking.
While Jordan and Maya talk, Memento writes Maya’s sentence down word by word, and shows when a third speaker starts talking.
“Was it Thursday or Tuesday?”
Search for the one word you remember, across every conversation you’ve kept.
Searching for “Thursday” finds two lines and jumps to Jordan saying: “I’ll share a review build by Thursday.”
You remember the gist, not the words
Play any line back from its first word, in the voice that said it.
Choosing Nina’s line plays it back from its first word: “Dana will own the sync queue work, starting Monday.”
“Who promised that?”
Memento tells voices apart, so you always know who said what.
Memento separates the three voices in the meeting: Maya Chen spoke for 9 minutes, Jordan Lee for 8 and Nina Patel for 7.
Recordings scattered everywhere
Drop in voice memos, recorded calls and videos. They become searchable too.
Three files dropped into Memento: a voice memo is already in the library, a recorded call is importing, and a lecture is next.
Recording, transcription, speaker labels and search all run on your Mac. Nothing goes to the cloud unless you turn it on yourself.
Memento’s privacy settings: cloud processing is off, so recordings stay on this Mac. Transcription runs on the Mac with a local model, and speaker labels and search always run on the Mac.
No trial, no tiers, no limits. Everything below is in the app you download.
Trade speed for accuracy. Every model runs on your Mac, and you can remove it any time.
The Models settings: Whisper Small is in use, Large v3 Turbo is downloading, and Parakeet v3 and a Hebrew Whisper model are ready to download. A speaker model and a search-by-meaning model are listed below.
Confirm a name once, and Memento suggests it next time.
Speaker settings set to suggest known people at 82 percent match confidence, and a prompt asking whether Speaker 2 is Dana.
Cloud and diagnostics are off. See any data before it’s sent.
Privacy settings with cloud processing and diagnostics switched off, and an inspector showing no pending data.
Or let Memento detect the language for you.
A language picker with Detect Automatically selected, and languages including English, Spanish, German, Japanese, Hebrew and Russian.
Hours-long recordings and whole folders, at no cost.
A library with a three-hour recording and a 41-file lecture series, and a usage counter that reads no limit.
Subtitles, text and JSON with speakers, or call Memento from your own scripts on your Mac.
Export formats TXT, SRT, VTT, JSON and Markdown, a subtitle excerpt, and a command sending a file to Memento’s local API on this Mac.
Memento sits between the free built-ins and the cloud meeting assistants. Here is where it wins, and where the others go further.
| Memento | MacWhisper | Apple Notes | Otter | Granola | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free · Pro €64 | Free | Free · from $8/mo | Free · from $14/mo |
| Private and free | |||||
| Every feature free | Yes | No | Yes | No | No |
| No minute or length limits | Yes | Yes | Not stated | No | No |
| Audio stays on your Mac | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Not used to train AI | Yes | Yes | Not stated | No | No |
| Works offline | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Control | |||||
| Choose your speech model | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Speaker labels | Yes | In paid plan | No | Yes | Not stated |
| About 99 languages | Yes | Yes | No | No | Not stated |
| Where others go further | |||||
| Captures Zoom, Meet and Teams audio | No | In paid plan | Not stated | Yes | Yes |
| Joins your calls as a bot | No | No | No | Yes | No |
| AI-written notes and chat | No | Not stated | Not stated | Yes | Yes |
| Team sharing | No | Not stated | No | Yes | Yes |
| Windows or phone apps | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Compared on 24 October 2026 from public pricing pages and independent reviews. A dash means we couldn’t find an answer. Apple Notes includes Voice Memos. Prices and features change, so check each product’s own site.
A bedtime story. Grandma’s recipe, told her way. The toast at the wedding. Keep the words, and the voice that said them.
Grandma, at Sunday dinner: “First you let the dough rest. Never rush it. It knows when it’s ready.”
No. Recording, transcription, speaker labels and search all run on your Mac. You can choose a cloud transcription provider in Settings, but it is off by default.
Yes. Once a transcription model is downloaded, Memento records, transcribes and searches without an internet connection.
Memento runs on Macs with Apple silicon.
Yes. Drop in audio or video files, such as voice memos, recorded calls and lectures. WAV, MP3, M4A, FLAC, MP4, MOV and many more formats are supported.
Yes. Export any transcript as plain text, SRT or WebVTT subtitles, a table or JSON, with or without timestamps and speaker names.
Nothing. Memento is free, with every feature included: no trial, no paid tiers, no ads, no account, and no limits on minutes or recordings. During the beta, the download asks for an invitation code.
Otter and Granola transcribe in the cloud and add AI notes, team sharing and meeting bots, but they need an account and their free plans have limits. MacWhisper also runs on your Mac, but its speaker labels and meeting recording are in the paid Pro version. Memento keeps everything on your Mac and includes every feature for free. It does not capture Zoom, Meet or Teams audio, write AI notes or share with a team. The comparison table above has the details.
Memento for macOS. Free, with every feature, kept word for word.