Folio
Local-first · No telemetry · macOS 13+

Meeting notes that never leave your Mac.

Folio captures system audio and your microphone, transcribes on-device, and writes a clean markdown note per meeting to your own vault. Private by default.

Install FolioRead the docs
brew install --cask folio
launch-sync-2026-06-18.md
local

title: Launch sync

attendees: You, Speaker 2, Speaker 3

duration: 28m · model: whisper-large-v3

source: on-device

You

Let's lock the launch date before we scope the rest.

Speaker 2

Works for me. I'll own the migration checklist.

Speaker 3

I can have the pricing page ready by Thursday.

You

Decision: ship on the 24th, freeze scope Friday.

1 decision · 2 tasks

On-device transcription

Metal-accelerated Whisper

Works fully offline

Privacy Mode airgap

No bots in your calls

System audio capture

Open source

Apache-2.0 licensed

What it does

A meeting recorder that respects your machine

Folio sits in the menu bar, watches your calendar and audio devices, and turns each conversation into a note you actually own.

Two streams, captured separately

System audio and your microphone are recorded as independent tracks via cpal and ScreenCaptureKit, so the transcript stays clean and attributable.

Private by default

The default path keeps audio, transcripts, and notes on your machine. Privacy Mode physically blocks every outbound call except localhost.

On-device diarization

Speakers are separated locally with pyannote segmentation and a speaker-embedding model. Your microphone is always labelled You.

One markdown note per meeting

Every meeting becomes a portable markdown file in your own vault, with frontmatter for attendees, duration, model, and source.

Connect your tools

A local MCP server gives Claude, Cursor, and Claude Code read-only access to your transcripts, tasks, and memory over stdio.

Yours to own

Plain files on disk, an open IPC contract, and an Apache-2.0 codebase. No lock-in, no account, no cloud dependency.

How it works

From a live call to a note you own

Four steps, all on your machine. The only time anything leaves is the one-time model download or an opt-in cloud call you trigger yourself.

  1. 01

    It notices the meeting

    Folio watches your calendar and audio devices through EventKit. No Google OAuth, no Microsoft Graph, no meeting bots.

  2. 02

    It records both sides

    When the call starts, system audio and your microphone are captured as separate streams and written to WAV on disk.

  3. 03

    It transcribes locally

    The bundled Whisper backend transcribes on-device and diarizes speakers. Cloud transcription is an explicit opt-in, never the default.

  4. 04

    It writes the note

    A markdown file lands in your vault with frontmatter, speaker-labelled transcript, decisions, and tasks. Searchable forever.

Privacy

The network is opt-in, not the default

Folio is built so the private path is the easy path. You can run an entire meeting end-to-end with Wi-Fi off.

  • No telemetry, no analytics, no crash reporting — enforced in CI.
  • Audio, transcripts, and notes stay on disk on the default path.
  • Privacy Mode blocks every outbound call except localhost.
  • Notes are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM and Argon2id.
How privacy works
Privacy Modeairgapped
  • Microphone capturelocal
  • System audio capturelocal
  • Whisper transcriptionlocal
  • Speaker diarizationlocal
  • Outbound HTTPblocked

Full details, retention, and the recording-consent guide live in the privacy documentation. Folio gives you the tool; obtaining consent is your responsibility.

mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "folio": {
      "command": "folio-mcp",
      "args": []
    }
  }
}
Claude DesktopCursorClaude CodeAny MCP client
Connectors

Your transcripts, available to your agents

Folio ships a local MCP server. Any MCP-aware tool gets read-only access to your transcripts, tasks, and memory over stdio — no cloud, no proxy.

  • Search past meetings without leaving your editor.
  • Pull decisions and action items into your workflow.
  • Everything runs on stdio, scoped to read-only.
Set up connectors
Install

Up and running in a minute

Requires macOS 13+ on Apple Silicon or Intel. The first run downloads the model weights once, then everything is local.

Recommended
brew tap woosal1337/folio https://github.com/woosal1337/folio
brew install --cask folio

Already installed? Update any time with brew upgrade --cask folio.

Questions

Answers before you install

More in the full FAQ and the documentation.

Own your meeting notes

Install Folio, grant microphone and screen-recording permission, and your next meeting writes itself to your vault.

Install for macOS 13+Star on GitHub
brew install --cask folio