Notator

The machine that takes notes on your calls.

Notator sits in your Mac's menu bar. When a Slack huddle starts it asks whether to take notes, records both sides, transcribes them on your Mac and prints the decisions and action items.

Download Notator

For Apple Silicon Macs on macOS 14.4 or later.

Fig. 1. The note-taking machine, at rest.

How the machine works

Four parts, in the order a call passes through them.

1 2 3 4
Fig. 2. Parts of the machine.

  1. Your horn

    Records your microphone on its own track. Notator only listens once you choose Take Notes, or for apps you told it to always record.

  2. The call's horn

    Records what everyone else says, straight from Slack, Zoom, Teams, Meet or any app you add. Two tracks mean the transcript knows who said what without guessing.

  3. The head

    Transcribes both tracks on your Mac with Whisper or Parakeet, then puts every line in the order it was said. With Accessibility access it also reads who is speaking in a Slack huddle.

  4. The printout

    Writes a summary with the decisions and action items, ready in the Notator window, in a notification and as files in ~/Notator.

What comes out

A real printout looks like this, with the speakers named and the action items pulled out.

PedroCan we ship the checkout on Thursday?
MarinaOnly if the payment retries are in. I can finish them tomorrow.
PedroThen Thursday, and I'll warn support today.

Decisions

  • Checkout ships on Thursday, once payment retries are in

Action items

  • Marina finishes the payment retries tomorrow
  • Pedro tells support about Thursday's release today

Example notes from a two-person huddle.

Specifications

Everything you would want to know before letting a machine listen to your calls.

Where the audio goesNowhere. Audio and transcripts stay on your Mac. Only the summary step sends the transcript text to Claude, and you can switch summaries off.
What it keepsEvery call is a folder in ~/Notator: the audio, the transcript and the notes as Markdown and JSON. Plain files you own.
Works with your toolsThe notator command and its MCP server let you search calls and action items from a terminal or an AI agent.
UpdatesNew versions install in the background, signed and notarized by Apple. Check for Updates is in the app menu if you would rather choose when.
RequirementsAn Apple Silicon Mac on macOS 14.4 or later. ffmpeg and whisper.cpp from Homebrew, which setup checks for and gives you the command to install. Summaries use your Claude Code login or an Anthropic API key.

Stop typing during calls.

Let the machine listen. You talk.

Download Notator