Why Transcripted is a 500 MB download
Transcripted is a free Mac app for private meeting notes. It is also a bigger download than you might expect. The reason is simple: the models that turn speech into text ship with the app, so your audio never has to go to a server.
The short answer
The Transcripted installer is about 500 MB. Most of that is not app code. It is the speech model that turns audio into text and the model that tells speakers apart.
Those models have to live somewhere. In Transcripted, they live on your Mac.
Where cloud apps keep their models
Most meeting note apps are small downloads because they do the hard work somewhere else. They record your call, upload the audio, and run it through models on their servers. Then they send the notes back.
That keeps the app light. It also means a copy of your meeting sits on someone else's computer.
What you get for the extra space
Your audio stays on your Mac. Transcription and speaker separation run on Apple Silicon. There is no required upload.
No meeting bot. Transcripted records from your Mac, so nothing joins the call as an extra attendee.
Plain files you own. Each meeting becomes a Markdown file with YAML frontmatter, which is a small block of structured details like date and speakers at the top of the file. You can open it in any text editor, search it, or drop it into Obsidian.
No subscription. There are no server bills to pass on to you. Transcripted is free and MIT licensed.
Could it be smaller?
Not by much. Any app that transcribes on your own machine needs a model on your own machine. Whether that model comes in the installer or arrives after, the space it takes is about the same.
What it needs to run
Transcripted needs a Mac with Apple Silicon and macOS 26 or later. On first launch it asks for Microphone access for your voice and Screen & System Audio Recording access for the other people on the call.
After that, it works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, FaceTime, and anything else that plays audio on your Mac.
The tradeoff, plainly
If disk space is tight, 500 MB is a real cost. But it is a one-time cost. The alternative is sending every meeting you have to a server you do not control, forever.
For private meeting notes, that seems like the right trade.
Private meeting notes that stay on your Mac
No bot, no upload, no subscription.