How to choose an offline meeting recorder for Mac
Seven things to check before you trust an app with your meetings, how to check each one yourself, and where Jiva stands.
"Private" often means "encrypted on our servers". Test it: turn Wi-Fi off and record a short call. If you still get a transcript, it's local.
Jiva: recording, transcription, speaker recognition and summaries all run offline.A bot in the participant list changes how people talk and needs the host's approval. A recorder that captures your Mac's audio doesn't.
Jiva: no bot; it records your Mac's audio, like QuickTime. Telling people is up to you.A transcript where everyone else is "Them" can't tell you who promised what. Look for real speaker labels, and names that carry over to the next meeting.
Jiva: 90% of words given to the right person on a public test meeting. See resultsAsk how the numbers were measured. A published method on a public recording beats a percentage on a homepage.
Jiva: method and results on the Benchmarks page, including where we're behind.Many apps cap free plans by meetings or minutes, then charge monthly. Check what happens at meeting 26.
Jiva: free, no meeting limit, no account.Can you open your transcripts without the app? Plain files on your disk outlast any company.
Jiva: every meeting is a Markdown file on your Mac.Local AI needs a recent Mac and some disk space for the speech models.
Jiva: Apple silicon, macOS 14.4 or later, about 6 GB of models downloaded once.curl -fsSL https://jiva.works/install.sh | bash