Subtitles

Subtitles · Live captions and meeting notes

Granola takes the notes.
This puts the words on screen.

An AI notepad writes the meeting up afterwards. Subtitles captions it while it is happening and then forgets it entirely. They are different jobs at different moments, which is why the honest answer to "which one" is usually both.

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This one will never write you a note

Worth saying before anything else, because it decides whether the rest of the page is any use to you. Subtitles produces no transcript, no summary and no file. Nothing is written to disk, ever, and that is a design decision rather than a roadmap item. Holding ⌥ stacks the last few captions back up on screen, which is how you catch the line you looked away from; they are held in memory, they go when you let go, and they are gone entirely when you quit.

So if what you need is the meeting written up, you need a notepad, and Granola is a good one. Nothing here competes with that. What follows is about the other half of the problem, which notepads are not built for: following the conversation while it is still going on.

A transcript you have to go and look at

Granola can show you a live transcript during the meeting. It is a panel inside the note, opened from a small waveform button by the chat bar or by clicking the audio indicator. That is fine while Granola is the window you are looking at.

It stops being fine the moment you are working. Switch to the document under discussion, or your editor, or the browser tab someone just asked about, and what follows you across is an indicator you click to go back to the note. Reading the last sentence means leaving the thing you switched to in order to read it, which is the opposite of what you needed when you switched.

The overlay here is above every window and passes clicks straight through, so it is on screen wherever you are, and you never interact with it at all. Text size, position and how long a line holds are yours to set, because it is meant to be read continuously rather than consulted. It also fades away under your pointer, so the document you switched to is never the thing it is covering, and when you do miss a sentence, ⌥ brings the last few boxes back where you already are instead of sending you to a panel in another window.

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Side by side

Granola's column is what its documentation and pricing say. Two things that are commonly assumed to be differences are not: neither of these sends a bot into your call, and neither records the audio.

Feature Granola Subtitles
What you end up with A written note, and a searchable history Nothing. The line is on screen and then it is gone
When you read it Afterwards While it is being said
Where it appears A transcript panel inside the note An overlay above every window, click-through
If you switch apps An indicator you click to go back to the note The captions stay where you put them
If you missed a line Scroll the transcript panel, back inside the note Hold ⌥ and the last boxes stack up where you are
Your microphone Transcribed too, as the other half of the conversation Never opened
What leaves the Mac The transcript, for the notes to be written Nothing, after the model downloads once
Model training On by default, with an opt-out in settings There is nothing to train on
Price Free tier with a capped history, then $14 per user per month $9 once

The privacy difference is narrower than you think, and real

  • Granola does not use a bot either. It captures your computer's system audio, the same approach taken here, so nothing joins the call and nobody sees a participant that should not be there. This is the thing people expect to be a difference, and it is not one.
  • It transcribes your microphone as well. It has to: a note of a meeting where only the other people speak would be half a note. This never opens the microphone, which is also why it can only ever show you the other side of a conversation.
  • The transcript leaves the machine, because a model writes the note. That is the trade a notepad makes to be useful, and Granola trains on your data by default with an opt-out in settings on every plan. Here there is no transcript to send and nothing to train on: the audio is captioned and discarded, nothing is recorded, and after the one-time model download there is no network call left to make.
  • The rest of the category does send a bot. Otter, Fireflies and most of the others join as a participant, visible to everyone in the meeting and disallowed outright in plenty of companies. Granola is the unusual one here, and it is worth saying so on a page that is comparing against it.

Questions about running both

Does this replace Granola?
No, and it is not trying to. Granola writes the meeting up afterwards and keeps a history you can search. This keeps nothing at all, on purpose. If you want notes, you want a notepad, and running both is the point of this page.
Why not just read Granola's live transcript?
Because it lives in Granola. The transcript is a panel inside the note, and once you move to your editor or the document under discussion, what follows you is an indicator you click to go back. Reading it means leaving whatever you switched to. An overlay that sits above every window and takes no clicks is a different thing to do with the same audio.
Does Granola use a bot?
No, and neither does this. Granola captures your computer's system audio the same way, so nothing joins the call in either case. That part is not a difference between them.
Does Granola record the audio?
No. It transcribes rather than recording, so there is no audio to go back to if the transcript is wrong. That is also true here, with the difference that here there is no transcript either.
So what is actually different about the privacy?
Two things. Granola transcribes your microphone as well as the call, because it needs both halves to write a useful note, and this never opens the microphone at all. And Granola's transcript leaves your Mac so a model can write the note, then trains on your data unless you opt out in settings. Nothing leaves here, so there is nothing to opt out of.
What about Otter, Fireflies and the rest?
Most of that category joins the call as a participant, which everyone in the meeting can see and which plenty of workplaces do not allow. Granola is unusual in not doing that. Either way, none of them put the words in front of you while you are working.

The same overlay, elsewhere

Zoom

Captions that do not wait for the host to switch anything on.

Microsoft Teams

Captions that do not depend on what your tenant’s admin allows.

Google Meet

On-device captions, whatever Workspace tier you are on.

Slack huddles

Captions with no workspace app to get approved.

vs Apple Live Captions

macOS has this built in and free. Where it stops being enough.

Let the notepad write it up. Read it now.

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Buy for $9

One-time $9, every future update included · macOS 14.2 or later · Apple Silicon
Unlimited live captions, for as long as you own the Mac. No minutes to buy, no account, no subscription.