Private Mac transcription for lawyers
NotchLive captions meetings, calls, videos, and dictated notes locally on your Mac, without inviting a meeting bot or uploading audio to a cloud transcription service.
Built for sensitive conversations, not compliance shortcuts
Legal work often involves calls, recorded trainings, hearings, interviews, research videos, and dictated follow-up notes. Those workflows need useful speech-to-text, but not every conversation belongs in a cloud transcription dashboard or with another participant joining the meeting.
NotchLive is a local-first captioning and transcription tool for Mac. It helps you follow spoken audio in real time, capture optional transcripts, and dictate notes while keeping the workflow on your device by default.
Important: NotchLive is not legal, compliance, or professional-responsibility advice. Lawyers and other professionals remain responsible for client consent, recording laws, court or workplace rules, privilege, confidentiality duties, and organization technology policies.
What NotchLive actually does
Captions audio from Mac apps
Use live captions for Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, browser videos, lectures, podcasts, and other audio already playing through your Mac.
Uses local speech recognition
Speech recognition runs on-device with WhisperKit and CoreML. The app does not send your audio to NotchLive servers for transcription.
Records optional transcripts
Pro users can save captioning sessions and export transcripts as TXT or JSON when a local record is appropriate.
Turns speech into notes
Voice Notes lets you dictate thoughts, call follow-ups, research notes, and next steps, then save, copy, export, or send them to NotchPad.
Why this is different from a meeting bot
| Workflow need | Cloud meeting bot | NotchLive |
|---|---|---|
| Official shared meeting archive | Often a good fit | Not the goal |
| Personal live captions while you work | Usually heavier than needed | Good fit |
| No extra participant in the call | Usually no | Yes, NotchLive runs locally on your Mac |
| Cloud audio transcription | Common | No NotchLive cloud audio transcription |
| Local transcripts and dictated notes | Depends on vendor and workspace settings | Stored locally unless you export, copy, or share |
Good fits for legal and privacy-sensitive work
- Client or prospect calls: read live captions without inviting an additional service into the meeting.
- Dictated notes: speak a quick summary after a call and keep the resulting note on your Mac.
- Recorded trainings and CLE videos: caption audio from the browser or media player while you watch.
- Research interviews: follow fast speech and save a local transcript when recording is appropriate.
- Solo and boutique workflows: use one local Mac app instead of a full team transcription platform.
What NotchLive does not promise
Careful tools still need careful use. NotchLive does not decide whether a conversation may be recorded, whether a transcript should be retained, or whether a specific workflow satisfies your professional obligations.
- It does not certify compliance with professional rules.
- It does not guarantee privilege or confidentiality.
- It does not replace your firm's technology, retention, or client-consent policies.
- It does not notify other participants for you.
Use NotchLive only in ways that are appropriate for the conversation, jurisdiction, workplace, and client relationship involved.
Try local captions first
Live captions are free forever. Upgrade once if you want translation, saved transcripts, Voice Notes, session history, and transcript export.
Requires macOS 14 or later. Apple Silicon is recommended for best on-device AI performance.