Questions about paperite
Short answers to what people actually ask. If something is missing, the support page has a contact address.
Getting started
What is paperite?
A macOS app that records meetings, transcribes them, separates the speakers and keeps the result as markdown notes on your Mac. Recording, transcription and the AI features all run on the device.
What does paperite cost?
It is free on the Mac App Store.
What do I need to run it?
A Mac running macOS 26 or later.
Which languages is paperite available in?
English, German, Spanish and French.
Recording
Does a bot join my meeting?
No. paperite never connects to the meeting platform. Nothing appears in the participant list and no join notification is sent.
Which meeting apps does it work with?
All of them. paperite captures audio at the operating system level rather than integrating with a platform, so Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, Slack huddles and anything else work identically.
Can I record an in-person meeting?
Yes. There is no video call involved, so a conversation at a table records the same way a video call does.
Does it still work if I am wearing headphones?
Yes. The system audio is captured before it reaches your headphones, so the other participants are recorded whether you are listening through speakers or not.
Does paperite record video?
No. Audio only.
Speakers
How does paperite know who said what?
It analyses voice characteristics across the recording, groups them into speakers, and assigns each part of the transcript to a group. Every line ends up with a speaker label and a timestamp.
What if it detects the wrong number of speakers?
You correct the number in the recording panel and re-process. The transcript is reassigned to the corrected count. A quiet participant or a noisy room can merge two people into one, so this happens in practice.
Can I give the speakers real names?
Yes. Each speaker can be renamed and the name applies across the whole transcript.
Privacy and data
Does paperite upload my recordings?
No. Audio, transcripts and summaries stay on the Mac. There is no paperite server for them to reach.
What does the App Store privacy label say?
Data Not Collected.
Does paperite need an internet connection?
No. Recording, transcription, speaker separation and the AI features all work offline.
How do the AI features work without the cloud?
paperite uses Apple Foundation Models, the language models built into macOS, which run on the device. Nothing is sent to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or any other provider.
Do I need an account?
No. There is no sign-up and no login.
Your files
Where are my notes stored, and in what format?
As markdown files in your own storage. If you stopped using paperite tomorrow, every note would still open in any text editor.
Can I use my notes in other apps?
Yes. They are ordinary markdown files on disk, so Obsidian, VS Code, iA Writer or anything else that reads markdown will open them. paperite does not lock them into a database.
Legal and comparison
Do I have to tell people I am recording?
Almost certainly, and in some places it is a criminal matter rather than a courtesy. In Germany, recording the confidential spoken word without consent is an offence under §201 StGB. paperite does not announce itself and does not make that decision for you.
How is paperite different from Otter, Fathom or Fireflies?
All of them now offer bot-free desktop recording, so that is no longer the difference. The difference is what happens next: those tools upload the audio to their servers to transcribe it, and paperite transcribes on your Mac.
Is paperite suitable for client meetings under an NDA?
That is a judgement for you and your client. What paperite can tell you is the technical position: the audio does not leave the machine, so there is no processor to name and no transfer to document.
Still stuck? The support page has a contact address. If you want the longer version of how any of this works, start with what happens to your recordings.