Local transcription
Offline meeting transcription and AI notes on your Mac
Learn how Replay transcribes meetings on your Mac, what works offline, which features need Apple Intelligence, and where your files are saved.
Transcribe locally after the initial setup
Replay records Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams calls and transcribes them on your Mac using Apple’s speech recognition. After purchase activation and the language model download, Replay’s recording and transcription work offline. A live Meet, Zoom or Teams call still needs the connection required by that service.
You need an Apple silicon Mac with macOS 26 or later. Each one-time purchase activates two Macs, and an activated Mac works offline indefinitely without a recurring license check.
Set up offline transcription
- Connect to the internet, install Replay and activate your purchase using your checkout email.
- Allow Screen & System Audio Recording, Microphone and Speech Recognition when macOS requests them.
- Open Replay → Settings → Transcripts, choose your transcription language, and let macOS finish downloading the speech model.
- Enable automatic transcription if you want new recordings transcribed after they finish, or transcribe a saved recording yourself.
- Make a short test recording and confirm the transcript is available before depending on Replay without an internet connection.
What works locally, and what needs a connection?
| Feature | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Recording and transcript search | Run on your Mac after activation. |
| Speech transcription | Runs on your Mac after the language model is downloaded. |
| Summaries and meeting questions | Run on your Mac with Apple Intelligence enabled and available for your system setup. |
| Purchase activation | Requires an internet connection once per Mac. |
| Speech model download and app updates | Require an internet connection when downloading. |
| Optional public video links | Require uploading a video copy; recipients stream it online. |
| Connected AI assistants | Depend on the assistant; a cloud model receives the meeting content it reads. |
Your transcript is an ordinary file
Replay saves calls under ~/Movies/Replay Recordings/. A call folder contains recording.mov, audio.m4a, transcript.json, transcript.md, transcript.srt, and generated notes when available. Open the readable Markdown transcript or subtitles in other apps, and back up the whole folder whenever you like.
The local recording workflow does not upload recordings, transcripts or summaries. Sharing a public video link is a separate, explicit action, and it does not include the transcript or notes.
Check the words that matter
Transcription quality depends on the language, the recording and how clearly participants speak. macOS determines the available transcription languages. Use headphones, choose a clear microphone and review names, numbers and action items against the original audio.
Replay initially labels the microphone track Me and the meeting track Them. You can name speakers and reassign individual transcript lines. This is different from automatically identifying every participant in a group call.