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The basics
What is Lalela?
Lalela is a private AI meeting notetaker for Mac (with an iPhone app on the way and a companion web app). It records both sides of your meetings without a bot, transcribes them on your device with Whisper, separates speakers, and turns conversations into summaries, action items and a searchable, chat-able archive — saved as Markdown files you own. "Lalela" means "listen" in isiZulu and isiXhosa.
How does Lalela record calls without joining them?
It captures your microphone and your Mac's system audio — the same sound coming out of your speakers — directly through macOS APIs. That covers Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, phone bridges played through the Mac, and in-person conversations. No participant, plugin or browser extension joins the meeting.
Which platforms does Lalela run on?
The Mac app (Apple Silicon, macOS 14+) is the flagship and free to download. A companion web app lets you view, search, chat about and share your synced meetings from any browser, and can record with browser microphone plus shared-tab audio when you can't install anything. The iPhone app is in testing. Android and Windows are on the roadmap.
Do I need an account?
No. Recording, on-device transcription, speaker separation, local search and local AI all work without signing in. An account adds the free monthly AI allowance, sync to the web and iPhone apps, and team sharing.
Privacy & security
Does my meeting audio leave my device?
In the default mode, never. Transcription runs on your Mac's GPU and the audio is discarded afterwards. The one exception is optional cloud transcription (the default on iPhone, where local compute is limited): audio goes to private storage, is transcribed, and is deleted from storage immediately after.
Is Lalela safe for confidential meetings — legal, medical, HR?
That's the design goal. No bot appears in the call, audio stays on-device in the default mode, notes are local files, and voiceprints (if you enable speaker recognition) are stored only locally. For regulated work, pair it with your obligations: get consent where required and use the fully-local AI mode so transcript text never reaches any third party.
Are my transcripts used to train AI models?
No. We never train on your content. Local-model summaries never leave the Mac at all; free-allowance requests are proxied to the model provider only to generate your answer; BYOK requests go straight to your own provider under your agreement with them.
Is it legal to record meetings?
Laws vary — many places require the consent of everyone recorded. Lalela shows a clear recording indicator and makes pausing, stopping and deleting easy, but consent is your responsibility. When in doubt, tell people you're taking notes and ask.
What is speaker recognition and where are voiceprints stored?
Optionally (off by default), Lalela computes a compact voice embedding per speaker so someone you've named once is auto-named in future meetings. These voiceprints are biometric data, so they live only in the local database on your Mac — they are never synced or uploaded, and you can delete them anytime in Settings → People & voices.
Transcription & AI
How accurate is the transcription?
Lalela runs OpenAI's Whisper locally on Apple Silicon — state-of-the-art open-source accuracy, in your language. You can also add a custom dictionary (names, clients, jargon, with pronunciation hints) that biases the transcriber, which noticeably improves the words that matter most.
Are there transcription limits or minute caps?
No. Transcription runs on your own hardware, so there's nothing for us to meter. Record ten hours a day if you like.
What AI options do I have for summaries and chat?
Three, switchable per meeting: (1) a fully-local model you download once — nothing leaves the Mac; (2) a free monthly allowance included with sign-in — no card or key needed; (3) your own OpenRouter key — any model, unlimited, billed by the provider at cost.
Can I chat with my meetings?
Yes — with one meeting, a folder, or your entire archive. Answers cite clickable timestamps back to the transcript, retrieval uses local full-text search, and conversations are saved so you can pick them up later.
Does Lalela work offline?
Fully. Record, transcribe, separate speakers, search, and — with a downloaded local model — summarize and chat, all with Wi-Fi off. Sync and the free AI allowance naturally need a connection.
Importing & organizing
Can I import recordings I already have?
Yes. Drop in MP3, M4A, MP4, WAV, FLAC, OGG, AAC or MKV files and they run through the exact same on-device pipeline as a live recording — transcription, speaker separation, summaries — labeled with their provenance.
Can I connect the notetaker I already use?
Yes. In Settings → Connections you can sign in to Fathom, Read AI, Granola or Microsoft Teams, or paste a Fireflies API key, and your meetings from those tools sync into Lalela automatically — speaker labels and timestamps included, filed in an "Imported from …" folder with clear provenance. Keep using your current tool for as long as you like; Lalela becomes the private home where everything compounds. Zoom, Google Meet and Grain connectors are on the way.
Can I import transcripts from Otter or other tools as files?
Yes — DOCX, PDF, TXT, Markdown and VTT files import with their speaker structure preserved when one exists. Lalela is honest about provenance: imported text is clearly marked as externally sourced, and a document without real speaker structure is saved as notes rather than dressed up as a fake transcript.
How do folders and sharing work?
Meetings live in nestable folders. Share a folder with teammates as viewer, editor or admin — subfolders follow — and shared meetings, tasks and activity show up for the team in the apps and on the web.
What are workflows?
Multi-step prompt pipelines you define per meeting type: e.g. transcript → minutes → client email → risk log. Each block can feed the next, run on any of the three AI modes, and outputs land as Markdown next to the meeting.
Pricing & product
How much does Lalela cost?
It's free to download and use: recording, on-device transcription, diarization and search have no caps. Signing in adds a free monthly AI allowance for summaries and chat. Heavy AI users can run a local model (free forever) or bring their own key and pay their provider at cost. Team plans are coming.
How is Lalela different from Otter, Fireflies, Fathom or Granola?
One axis: where your conversation is processed. Those tools transcribe in their clouds (and most put a bot in your call). Lalela transcribes on your Mac, never joins meetings, can run the entire pipeline offline, and stores notes as files you own. See our detailed comparison pages for an honest side-by-side.
Who builds Lalela?
Auxo Digital, a South African software studio. Lalela means "listen" in isiZulu and isiXhosa — building world-class, privacy-first tools from Africa for everywhere.
Convinced? Curious?
The download is free and the first meeting takes two minutes to set up.
Download for Mac