GitHub Install

Meeting notes.
On your Mac.

Write your notes, get a transcript with speaker names, and keep everything on your own computer.

Install View on GitHub

Free and open source. Apple Silicon. macOS 14.2 or later.

Features

You write what matters. Tinta writes the rest.

You take the notes that are important to you. Tinta writes down the full conversation, names the speakers, and writes a summary. All of it happens on your Mac.

Notes and transcript side by side

Write your notes while the draft transcript appears next to them. Click Insert timestamp to add the time of the call to your notes. Your notes stay separate from the transcript.

Local transcription

Parakeet v3 runs on the Apple Neural Engine. It transcribes English, Spanish, and 23 other European languages, 25 languages in total. Tinta detects the language.

A recording in Tinta: level meters for the microphone and the meeting audio, notes on the left, and a live draft of the transcript on the right.

Speaker names

Tinta separates the voices in the call. On Google Meet, a small Chrome extension reads who speaks, and Tinta names each speaker. In the Zoom and Microsoft Teams desktop apps, Tinta reads who speaks from the call window (beta).

After the call, you can confirm, correct, merge, or split speakers. Each person gets a color.

The Chrome extension popup during a recording: the call Design review with 4 people, and Alex Moreno marked as the active speaker.

Next meetings

Tinta reads the calendars on your Mac and shows your next meetings. It needs no sign-in. One minute before each call, a reminder shows. Click Join and take notes, and Tinta joins the call and opens the notes.

Call detection

Tinta detects calls in Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams, and offers to record them. It stops the recording 3 seconds after you leave the call.

Home in Tinta: a Google Meet call with a Record this call button, the recent meetings, and the next meetings from the calendar.

Local summaries

After the call, the Apple on-device model writes a summary from your notes and the transcript. The summary has an overview, key points, decisions, and action items. It runs on your Mac.

Summaries need macOS 26 and Apple Intelligence. A summary can contain mistakes, so check it against the transcript.

A meeting in the dark appearance: a summary with key points and action items above the notes and the transcript.

  • Your library

    Search your meetings, and sort them into folders and tags. Export a meeting to Markdown, JSON, SRT, or VTT.

  • Trash

    Deleted meetings stay in the trash for 7 days. Restore a meeting, or delete it permanently at once.

  • Import from Granola

    Bring your Granola export into Tinta, with the notes, the transcripts, and the speaker names.

  • MCP server

    Connect Claude or another MCP client to your meetings when you choose to. You can undo every change. Connect a client

Privacy

Your meetings stay on your Mac.

Tinta has no chat and no cloud AI. The transcription, the speaker separation, and the summaries run on your Mac.

  • Processing

    Transcription, speaker separation, and summaries run on your Mac. Tinta has no server and no cloud service.

  • Network

    Tinta downloads the speech models once, about 500 MB. After that, it makes no network requests: no analytics, no crash reports, and no update checks.

  • Storage

    SQLCipher encrypts the library, and AES-GCM encrypts the audio. The key is in your macOS Keychain. Time Machine does not back up the library.

  • Audio

    By default, Tinta deletes the audio 7 days after a meeting. In Settings, you can set 0 to 30 days. You can also delete the audio of one meeting at once.

  • Summaries

    The Apple on-device model writes the summaries. Tinta does not use Private Cloud Compute or any other server.

  • Browser

    The Meet extension reads only participant names, who speaks, and whether your microphone is muted. It does not read captions, chat, or audio.

  • Zoom and Teams

    Tinta detects a call from the use of the microphone. With names from Zoom and Teams (beta), it reads the names, who speaks, and the mute state from the call window. This needs Accessibility access.

  • MCP

    MCP access is local, and you turn it on. An AI client that reads your meetings sends that content to its own model provider.

Tinta does not tell other people in a call that you record. Always tell them.

How it works

Five parts. All of them on your Mac.

The helpers connect to the app over a private Unix socket. The app accepts only the signed helpers inside its own bundle.

The microphone and the call audio go to the engine. The engine makes the transcript and separates the speakers. The app keeps everything in the encrypted library and shows it to you. The Chrome extension and the call reader send the names of the speakers. An MCP client connects to the app through tinta-mcp.
App
A Tauri 2 window with a React interface. It owns the encrypted library, name matching, retention, and the app socket.
Engine
A Swift process for capture, encrypted audio chunks, and the speech models through FluidAudio.
MCP server
tinta-mcp speaks MCP over stdio. It forwards tool calls to the running app.
Native host
The Chrome Native Messaging host for the Meet extension.
Chrome extension
Reads the Meet participants and the active speakers.

Speech models

ModelUseLicense
Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3TranscriptionCC-BY-4.0
Silero VADVoice activityMIT
pyannote Community-1Speaker separationCC-BY-4.0

Tinta downloads the models at pinned revisions and checks each file against its SHA-256 hash.

MCP

Use your meetings in Claude, when you choose to.

Tinta includes an MCP server. Connect Claude or another MCP client to your meetings. Tinta records every change that a client makes, so you can undo it.

  • The tools can list, search, and read meetings, with the notes, the transcripts, and the summaries.
  • They can change titles, tags, folders, notes, summaries, speaker names, and transcript text.
  • Deletions go to the trash. The MCP screen lists every request and lets you undo each change.
  • Tinta must be open while the client works.

An AI client that reads your meetings sends that content to its own model provider. Meeting text can contain instructions from other people. Do not let an AI client act on them.

  1. In Tinta, open MCP in the sidebar. Turn on “Allow MCP clients to read and change meetings”.

  2. For Claude Code, run this command:

    claude mcp add tinta /Applications/Tinta.app/Contents/MacOS/tinta-mcp

  3. For Claude Desktop, add this to the configuration:

    {
  "mcpServers": {
    "tinta": { "command": "/Applications/Tinta.app/Contents/MacOS/tinta-mcp" }
  }
}

Requirements

What you need

A Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) and macOS 14.2 or later
Required. 16 GB of memory is recommended.
About 1 GB of free disk space
Required, for the app and the speech models.
Google Chrome
For speaker names on Google Meet.
The Zoom Workplace or Microsoft Teams desktop app
For calls in Zoom or Teams. Tinta does not read Zoom or Teams calls in a browser.
macOS 26 or later with Apple Intelligence turned on
For summaries. Transcripts and speaker names work without it.

Install

Build Tinta from source

Tinta has no signed download yet. These steps build the app on your Mac.

Status: a pilot

Tinta is in active development. Expect bugs and changes, and export the meetings that matter. To report a bug or suggest an improvement, open an issue.

  1. Install the Xcode Command Line Tools, Rust, Node.js 20 or later, and pnpm.

  2. Clone the repository:

    git clone https://github.com/pepebndc/tinta.git && cd tinta

  3. Build the app:

    ./scripts/build.sh

  4. Move target/release/bundle/macos/Tinta.app to your Applications folder.

  5. Open Tinta. macOS blocks apps without Apple notarization. Open System Settings, then Privacy & Security, and click Open Anyway.

  6. If macOS asks whether Tinta can use its key in the Keychain, click Always Allow.

Then the first-run setup guides you: your name, the speech models, the microphone, and the Chrome extension.

FAQ

Questions

Is Tinta free?

Yes. Tinta is free and open source, under the Apache-2.0 license. The speech models have their own licenses.

Does Tinta send my meetings to a server?

No. Transcription, speaker separation, and summaries run on your Mac. After the one-time model download, Tinta makes no network requests. If you connect an MCP client, that client sends what it reads to its own model provider.

Does Tinta tell the other people that I record?

No. Tinta does not tell other people in a call that you record. Always tell them before you start the recording.

Which languages does Tinta transcribe?

English, Spanish, and 23 other European languages. Tinta detects the language. Summaries support English, Spanish, and the other Apple Intelligence languages.

Does Tinta work on a Mac with an Intel processor?

No. Tinta needs a Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) and macOS 14.2 or later.

Do I need Apple Intelligence?

Only for summaries. Summaries need macOS 26 or later with Apple Intelligence turned on. Transcripts and speaker names work without it.

Can Tinta record Zoom or Teams in a browser?

No. Tinta reads Zoom and Teams calls in their desktop apps only. For Google Meet, use Chrome with the Tinta extension.

Why is there no download?

Tinta has no Developer ID signature or Apple notarization yet. Build it from source with the install steps.