
In simple English
Humla is a Mac app that records your meetings, transcribes the speech, and writes a summary that combines your own notes with what everyone said. It works entirely on your computer so your audio and data stay private. You do not need an account or a subscription to use it on your own machine. It is free and open-source, with optional paid sync if you want to share notes with a team across multiple devices.
What it is
Humla is a native macOS desktop app built with Tauri, Rust, and Swift that handles audio recording, local or cloud transcription, speaker identification, and AI summaries. It stores all your meeting notes and transcripts in a local database on your Mac.
What it is good for
This is good for remote workers, consultants, and solo builders who want private meeting notes without paying high monthly fees for cloud transcription services. It removes the need for annoying third-party meeting bots that join your calls.
- Records your microphone and system audio as separate streams without needing a meeting bot.
- Can run completely offline using local models on Apple Silicon without sending data anywhere.
- Includes a local Model Context Protocol server so coding assistants can search your meeting notes.
- Requires macOS 13 or newer and works best on an Apple Silicon Mac.
- Building from source requires installing Rust, Node, CMake, and Xcode command line tools.
- Storing recorded audio files can fill up your local hard drive quickly if left on.
Granola or Otter
Ollama
- ggml-org/whisper.cpp55k stars
Provides the local speech-to-text engine used for offline transcription.
- tauri-apps/tauri112k stars
Provides the desktop application framework used to build the native app shell.
- snapcast/snapcast8.0k stars
A server and clients that play one audio stream in several rooms, kept in time with each other.
- MusicPlayerDaemon/MPD2.8k stars
A background music player with no interface of its own, controlled over a network by separate client programs.
- AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenTimelineIO2.0k stars
An interchange format and library for editing timelines: the order and length of cuts, and references to the media, but not the media.
git clone https://github.com/michaelwilhelmsen/humla.git cd humla pnpm install ./scripts/build-sidecar.sh ./scripts/build-diarize.sh ./scripts/build-mcp.sh pnpm tauri dev