Aside
Who is finishing the pricing page?
Thursday morning, once the copy lands.
Anything blocking us?
Nothing was named as a blocker. Two bugs are open in the export path and both were called out as not blocking anybody.
What launch date did we land on?
The fourteenth, and this time it was pinned rather than moved. The one thing that has to land before it is the pricing page, live before Friday.
The meeting copilot that’s actually yours.
Aside records any meeting on your Mac. No bot joins. Audio is transcribed on-device, and every note is saved as Markdown in a folder you choose.
Free for your first ten meetings. No card, no account. macOS 26+.
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Nothing joins your call.
Aside listens to system audio and your microphone. Nobody sees a bot.
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Your notes are files.
Plain Markdown, saved in your folder. Open it anywhere, keep it forever.
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Your audio stays on your Mac.
Transcription runs locally. No audio upload required.
Hang up. The note is already written.
Same meeting, thirty seconds later: decisions, action items, the exact quote, in a Markdown file on your disk.
Below: a demonstration of the Aside library window, showing example meetings and their notes.
One tap. The rest takes care of itself.
You start the recording, and the file appears in your folder when the call ends. Aside sits in your Mac’s notch, or as a floating pill if your Mac has no notch.
Your audio stays on your Mac.
Your audio never leaves your Mac. The transcript goes only to the AI you choose, and with Ollama even that stays local. Every note lands as Markdown in your folder.
See exactly what is sent, and when, in Legal and privacy.
On-device transcription, measured against the cloud.
We tested six real meetings against transcripts corrected by hand, next to the transcribers the cloud tools use. How the run was scored, and what it does not cover, is on the benchmarks page.
Transcription accuracy
higher is betterOne hour of audio, time to transcript
lower is betterAn hour of audio from six real meetings, scored against a reference transcript we settled by hand. Measured in August 2026 on an M4 Pro. The cloud figure is a round trip and not a processing time: uploading the audio, the service transcribing it, and the transcript coming back. See the methodology.
Your agent can follow along. Only when you allow it.
Turn on live access and Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or another MCP client can read the current transcript. Access stays off by default.
Below: a demonstration of an agent following a meeting, with an example landing page it edits while the call runs.
- Claude Code
- Codex
- Cursor
- Any MCP client
Aside ships an MCP server, so any client that speaks MCP can read your meetings.
It works wherever the meeting is.
System audio or microphone.
If your Mac can hear the meeting, it is in the transcript.
One app, two ways to run it.
Choose Aside cloud for zero setup, or run the note-writing AI yourself.
Easiest setup
We run the model
Everything included. Nothing to configure.
$8/month
- Ready in minutes
- Model usage included
- No API key required
- Every update included
Buy later. Your first three monthly payments count toward the $79 purchase.
Cancel anytime.
Full control
You choose the model
Own Aside outright and connect it your way.
$79one-time
- Use Ollama or your own API key
- Run fully local with Ollama
- No subscription to Aside
- Every update included
Model costs are yours: run it locally with Ollama (about 2 GB, any Mac with 8 GB memory) or bring your own API key and pay the provider directly.
One-time payment. Yours forever.
Tax is added at checkout where it applies.
The things people ask first.
Where do my meeting notes end up?
In a folder you choose, on your own Mac, as Markdown. Put that folder in Git, open it in Obsidian, sync it, move it. Nothing expires.
Is there a trial?
Ten meetings, free. That’s a real unit of use, unlike fourteen days, which punishes anyone whose week is quiet.
What happens after my ten free meetings?
Everything you already recorded stays where it is. Opening, searching and exporting keep working. Only new recordings need a license.
What happens if I stop paying?
Stop paying the $8 and Aside stops recording new meetings, but everything you already recorded stays yours and readable, and the $79 purchase never stops. Aside cloud is part of the subscription, so writing new notes then needs your own API key or Ollama.
How many Macs can I use it on?
The license is per person, not per machine. Use Aside on every Mac that is yours.
What does buying it once include?
Every update to the app, for good. If we ever build a successor so big it costs money again, that will be a new purchase with a discount for owners, and the version you bought keeps working either way.
Is there an iPhone or Apple Watch app?
Not yet, and both are on the list once the Mac app has landed. Meetings happen on phones and in rooms too, and your notes should end up in the same folder either way.
Is there a Windows version?
Not yet. If enough of you ask for one, it will get built. macOS came first because that is where Aside lives best.
Can my AI agent read my meetings?
Yes. Aside ships an MCP server, which is the standard way an AI tool asks another app for data, and it works with Claude Code, Codex and any other MCP client. Live access is off until you turn it on.
Which languages does it transcribe?
About 99, auto-detected, on your Mac.
Does it know who said what?
While you are recording, the live transcript is one run of text. When the meeting stops, Aside separates the speakers on your Mac and labels every turn in the saved transcript, taking names from the calendar invite where it can tell who is who.
Does it work offline?
Transcription does. A working speech model ships inside the download, and a larger, more accurate one is fetched once on first run. After that it runs on your Mac with no connection. Writing the note needs whichever AI you picked, so that step goes online unless you point Aside at a local model with Ollama, which makes the whole thing offline.
What exactly gets sent to Aside cloud?
Transcript text, once per note, plus any question you ask. Never the audio. With your own key it goes to that provider instead, and with a local model it goes nowhere.
Do I need to tell people I record?
Aside does not announce itself, so nobody in the call is told. Whether you have to say it depends on where you and the others are, and that call is yours to make, not ours.