Introduction
I built Humla because I was tired of choosing between good meeting notes and keeping my conversations private. Tools like Granola are genuinely nice to use, but they run your audio through someone else's cloud, on someone else's terms. I wanted the same experience — type freeform notes, get a clean AI summary that actually reflects what was said — without handing my meetings to a service I don't control. So Humla is a Mac app that records, transcribes, and summarizes locally, using your own API keys or on-device models. Your data stays on your machine.
("Humla" is Norwegian for bumblebee, in case you were wondering.)
The Problem
If you take notes during meetings, you know the split-attention problem: you're either listening or writing, never both well. Automatic transcription tools solve half of it, but most of them are cloud services that upload your audio, lock you into a subscription, and give you a transcript that reads like a wall of text with no connection to the notes you actually cared about.
For anyone who deals with sensitive conversations — client calls, 1:1s, interviews, internal strategy — that trade-off is a dealbreaker. You end up not recording at all, and you're back to scribbling and missing things.
The Solution
Humla runs everything on your Mac. You jot down freeform notes during the meeting like you normally would. In the background it records your mic and system audio as two separate streams, transcribes them, and then produces a summary that fuses your notes with the full transcript. Your notes carry the intent, the transcript fills in the facts you missed.
You bring your own keys or skip the cloud entirely and run transcription and summarization fully on-device. Nothing is stored on a backend by default. Your notes live in a local SQLite database in your own Library folder. (If you want sync across devices, Humla Cloud is an optional opt-in — but the local app never needs it. It's a local SQLite database in your own Library folder, and that's it.
Key Features
- Local-first and private by default — Your notes, audio, and transcripts live on your Mac in a local database. No account required, no backend, nothing uploaded unless you choose a cloud provider yourself.
- Fully offline mode — Transcribe with on-device Whisper and summarize with a local LLM. You can run entire meetings without a single network request leaving your machine.
- Notes + transcript fused summaries — The AI summary is built from both your typed notes and the recorded transcript, so it captures what you meant, not just what was said.
- Bring your own provider — Pick from OpenAI, Deepgram, Groq, or on-device Whisper per language. Norwegian goes to a local NB model, English to Deepgram, whatever fits your setup.
- Speaker labels you can rename — After a meeting, Humla figures out who spoke when and gives each speaker a color-coded pill. Click to rename them to real names.
- Presets for how you actually meet — Meeting, 1:1, lecture, interview, brainstorm, voice memo. Each shapes the summary differently, or write your own prompt.
Frequently Asked Questions
What problem does Humla solve? It lets you record, transcribe, and summarize meetings without giving up privacy or paying a subscription. You get accurate notes that combine your own writing with the transcript, all processed on your own machine with your own keys.
Who should use Humla? Anyone on a Mac who takes a lot of meetings and cares where their audio ends up: consultants, founders, researchers, journalists, people doing interviews or 1:1s. It's built for individuals and small teams, not big-company SaaS rollouts.
When is Humla the right choice? When privacy matters, when you don't want another monthly subscription, or when you simply want to own your data. If you're already comfortable with the idea of running things locally or plugging in your own API key, Humla will feel right at home.
How is Humla different from alternatives? Most meeting-notes tools are cloud services first. Humla is local first. There's no backend holding your recordings, you can go fully offline, and you're never locked into one transcription vendor. It's open and built to be yours, not rented.
Conclusion
Good meeting notes shouldn't cost you your privacy. Humla gives you the polished, AI-assisted notes you want while keeping every recording and transcript on your own machine. If you've been looking for a Granola-style experience that respects your data, give it a try — download Humla, plug in your own key or go fully local, and see what your next meeting looks like when you're not worrying about where the audio goes.