Google’s AI note-taking app transcribes your meetings completely offline

Google has released Google AI Edge Foresight, a free, experimental note-taking app for macOS that transcribes meetings and audio files entirely offline, according to The Verge, which credits TechCrunch with reporting it first. It runs on Google's on-device EmbeddingGemma 2 model and is currently optimized only for Macs with Apple Silicon.

Like Granola and Wispr Flow, it turns rough bullet points into cleaner notes based on the transcript, and it includes an assistant that can answer questions about the meeting and about local files a user connects. Google says files, audio and notes never leave the computer.

We think this is the right direction for meeting tools, and it is worth saying plainly. Meeting transcripts are some of the most sensitive data a company produces: personnel talk, deal terms, half-formed strategy. Most AI note-takers send that audio to someone's servers. An app that does the work on the laptop removes a whole category of risk, from breaches to unclear data retention to vendors training on what was said.

It is also notable that Google, a company built on the cloud, is the one shipping it, and on a Mac rather than its own hardware. The likelier read is that Google wants a showcase for its on-device models and wants developers to see what local AI can handle. That is a useful demonstration either way.

The caveats are real, though. This is labeled experimental, so there is no promise it sticks around. Local processing protects data from the vendor; it does nothing about consent in the room. An offline recorder is still a recorder, and easier, quieter transcription makes it easier to capture people who never agreed to be transcribed. Workplaces and some jurisdictions have rules about recording meetings, and those do not go away because the audio stays on one machine.

There is also a quality question we cannot answer from the report. A smaller on-device model may summarize less accurately than cloud systems, and polished notes that confidently misstate a decision can do more damage than a messy transcript.

I'm watching whether on-device becomes the default expectation for meeting AI. If it does, that is a genuine privacy win, and Foresight will have helped set the bar.

AI note-taking has become a crowded category, with apps such as Granola and Wispr Flow summarizing calls and dictation. The Verge says Foresight stands out by operating on-device rather than in the cloud.