Meeting notes that know who's talking.
Correct it a few times, then it just knows.
Basalt quietly records and transcribes your Teams meetings. Correct a name a handful of times early on, and it builds a voice profile for that person. After that, it recognizes them automatically: in every future call, or simply talking beside you in the room, even if they never joined the call on their own device.
Free to start · Pro features on the way
Every other notetaker only knows who's on the invite list.
Tools like Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, and Shadow all get participant names the same way: from the meeting's own attendee list. That works fine when everyone dials in from their own laptop. It falls apart the moment someone doesn't: a colleague sitting next to you in a conference room, someone joining by phone under a different name, anyone who's simply in the room and never opened the call themselves. To every other notetaker, that person is just noise.
Most of these tools also add themselves to your call as their own visible guest, with the recording uploaded straight to someone else's servers to be processed. And no matter how many times you've met the same people, they start from zero every single meeting: every voice reintroduced as an anonymous "Speaker 1."
Basalt works differently. It recognizes people by their actual voice, not by who happened to check in to the call. Correct a name a few times and Basalt knows that voice for good: on a call, in the room, joined or not, all processed on your Mac without sending a single word anywhere else.
Built to know people, not just record them
What comes out of building a notetaker that actually pays attention to who it's listening to.
Remembers every voice
Correct a name a handful of times early on, from a simple dropdown, and Basalt builds a voice profile for that person. From then on it recognizes them automatically: in your next meeting together, or just talking beside you in the room.
100% private, always
Recording and transcription both happen on your Mac, using Apple's own on-device technology. Nothing is uploaded, and it keeps working with no internet connection.
No stranger in your call
Basalt never joins your meeting as a visible guest. It listens quietly from your Mac, and nobody on the call can tell it's running.
Starts itself, stops itself
Basalt notices the moment your Teams call begins and ends. There's no button to remember to press.
Save it wherever you already keep your notes.
Point Basalt at any folder on your Mac, including your Obsidian vault, and every transcript lands exactly where you'd look for it. Because it's just a plain text file, it also works with whatever AI assistant you already use: drop it into Claude, ChatGPT, or anything else, and ask it anything about the meeting.
How the trade-offs actually compare
Every meeting notetaker makes the same handful of trade-offs. This is where each one lands.
| Trade-off | Basalt | Bot notetakers Otter, Fireflies, Fathom |
Teams built-in transcription | Shadow AI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Remembers a voice for next time | Yes | No | No | No |
| Recognizes people who never joined the call themselves | Yes | No | No | No |
| Stays invisible, never joins as a visible guest | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Works without IT approval | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Where your audio is processed | Your Mac | Their servers | Microsoft's cloud | Your Mac, cloud for AI notes |
| Works with no internet | Yes | No | No | Transcription only |
| Price | Free to start | Monthly subscription | Included in some Microsoft 365 plans | Free, then $8/month |
What happens during a call
Notices your call starts
Basalt notices you've joined a Teams meeting and starts listening quietly in the background.
Records two tracks
What the room says, and what you say, are kept separate from the very first second.
Transcribes on your Mac
As soon as the call ends, both tracks turn into text on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded to make this happen.
Remembers who's talking
Anyone Basalt already knows is labeled automatically. New voices take a few corrections before Basalt has them down.
A few honest notes before you start
Needs a fairly new Mac
Basalt runs on Apple's newest on-device speech technology, which means macOS Tahoe (26) or newer. That's also exactly what makes the on-device part possible.
Built for Microsoft Teams, today
Basalt is designed around Teams meetings right now. Support for other video call apps may follow.
New voices start as "Unknown"
The first few times Basalt hears someone, it won't have their name yet. Correct it a handful of times early on, and it remembers them for good.
Works best with headphones
On speakers instead of headphones, the room's audio can bleed into your own mic track. Headphones keep the two fully separate.
What's coming next
Basalt is still growing. Here's what's next.
Zoom and Google Meet
Basalt works with Microsoft Teams today. Zoom and Google Meet are next, with the same on-device recording and voice recognition.
Smart screenshots
Half of what a meeting is actually about lives on the screen, not in what's said: slides, a design review, a code diff, a dashboard. Basalt will start capturing that too, timestamped alongside the transcript.
The more you meet, the less you explain.
Free to download. Pro features are on the way for teams that want more.