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.
Meeting notes and dictation. On your Mac.
Aside records and transcribes your meetings, and it types what you say into any app. No bot joins the call, and every note is saved as Markdown in a folder you choose.
Free to start. No card.
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Nothing joins your call.
Aside listens to system audio and your microphone. Nobody sees a bot.
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Hold a key and speak.
Clean text lands in any app on your Mac, online or off.
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Your audio stays on your Mac.
Transcription runs locally. No audio upload required.
Your meeting, saved as Markdown.
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. Its controls sit in your Mac’s notch, or float at the top of the screen if your Mac has no notch.
Hold fn. Say it. It lands at your cursor.
The transcription that records your meetings also takes dictation. Hold fn, say it, let go, and the text lands at your cursor in any app, punctuated and cleaned up.
Move Thursday to 3 and send Sam the deck.
On my way, there in ten.
Ask Sam for the deck before Thursday.
Standup moved to two, room three.
git commit -m "tighten the export path"
Your audio stays on your Mac.
Your audio never leaves your Mac. Meeting summaries and chat go to the AI you choose, and with Ollama even that stays local. Dictation never leaves the Mac at all. 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.
Word error rate
lower 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 AI for zero setup, or run the note-writing AI yourself. Recording and transcription run on your Mac. For the notes and chat, choose Aside AI, your own AI provider, or a local model with Ollama.
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. Switch to the 75 € licence any time.
Cancel anytime.
Full control
You choose the model
Own Aside outright and connect it your way.
75 €one-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 (the model we suggest is about 2 GB and fits 8 GB of memory) or bring your own API key and pay the provider directly.
One-time payment. Yours forever.
Tax is included in the price.
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?
Your first ten meetings are free, and dictation is free for seven days after you set it up. The two trials run independently, and after each one that side needs a paid plan.
What happens after my ten free meetings?
Everything you already recorded stays where it is. Opening, searching and exporting keep working. New recordings, and dictation once its seven days are up, need a paid plan.
What happens if I stop paying?
Stop paying the 8 € and Aside stops recording new meetings and stops dictating into your apps, but everything you already recorded stays yours and readable, and the 75 € purchase never stops. Aside AI 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 licence 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. Aside is a Mac app; iPhone and Apple Watch apps are on the list but not available yet. 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?
Meetings: about 99, auto-detected, on your Mac. Dictation: the same model, in the languages your Mac is set to, detected as you talk.
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.
Does Aside replace my dictation app?
It works the same way: hold a key, speak, the text is typed wherever your cursor is. fn by default, or right ⌘, right ⌥, F13 or F5 if you prefer. Hold to talk, or double tap to latch for longer text. It runs on your Mac, it is free for seven days after setup, and after that it is part of the paid plan.
Does dictation work offline?
Yes. The speech model runs on your Mac, so once it is installed, dictation needs no wifi. It is one model of about 1.5 GB, the same one your meetings are transcribed with, and it understands about 99 languages, picked out of what you say.
What exactly gets sent to Aside AI?
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.