Record, transcribe and summarise your meetings on your own Mac. Echo is a free, self-hosted alternative to Fireflies, Otter.ai and Fathom: no bot joins your call, there is no account, and your audio never leaves your laptop.
Website · Documentation · Install · Changelog
Cloud notetakers send every meeting to someone else's servers and drop a bot into your calls. Echo does the same job, recording, transcription, speaker labels and notes, entirely on your Mac. It is a product you run yourself, not a service: nobody else ever handles your recordings.
- No bot in your call. A Brave or Chrome extension records the Google Meet, Zoom (web) or Microsoft Teams (web) tab you are already in.
- Whisper on your Mac. Transcribe with Whisper Large V3 Turbo in the browser or Large V3 natively. Works offline after the one-time model download.
- Speaker grouping. Who said what, computed locally with PyAnnote and WavLM. Rename speakers and correct passages; every edit is versioned.
- Notes you can check. Summaries, decisions and action items from a local Ollama model, each linked to the moment it came from.
- Encrypted library. SQLCipher database and encrypted audio, a key in the macOS Keychain, a 24-word recovery phrase and encrypted backups.
- Recordings that survive. The extension keeps audio encrypted in the browser until Echo is reachable, then uploads it.
- More ways in. Record in-person meetings with your microphone, upload existing audio, and see upcoming meetings from Google Calendar (read-only).
| Echo | Fireflies | Otter.ai | Fathom | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Runs on your computer | Yes | No | No | No |
| Bot joins the call | No | By default | Yes | By default |
| Account needed | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Yes (MIT) | No | No | No |
| Where data is stored | Your Mac, encrypted | Vendor cloud | Vendor cloud | Vendor cloud |
Sources and dates are in the full comparison.
You need an Apple Silicon Mac (macOS 14+), Xcode command line tools, Rust, Node.js 22.18+, pnpm, and Brave or Chrome. The install guide covers each step from a fresh Mac.
git clone https://github.com/samarthmn/echo-voice-web.git
cd echo-voice-web
./scripts/setup.sh # checks prerequisites, installs dependencies, builds everything
./scripts/start.sh # serves Echo at http://localhost:3000- Open http://localhost:3000 and allow Echo to use the Keychain.
- Load the extension:
brave://extensions(orchrome://extensions) → Developer mode → Load unpacked →extension/dist. - Save your recovery phrase in Settings → Storage.
- Download a speech model under Models.
- Join a meeting, open the Echo extension, and Start recording.
Something off? Run ./scripts/doctor.sh. To start Echo at login, see start at login; to update, run ./scripts/update.sh.
| Requirements, install, first recording | Getting started |
| Extension, recording, models, notes, calendar | Using Echo |
| Configuration, backups and recovery, troubleshooting | Self-hosting |
| Security model, privacy, licences | Trust |
| Architecture, development, releasing | Contributing |
The same pages are on echo-web.samarthmn.com/docs.
Echo has no telemetry and never sends meeting data off your Mac; privacy lists every network request it can make. Recording other people is regulated in many places. You are responsible for getting consent and following the recording laws where you and the other participants are. Echo asks you to confirm consent before every recording.
Bug reports, fixes and ideas are welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING.md, and please report security issues privately as described in SECURITY.md.
MIT. Mulish is under the SIL Open Font License; speech models have their own licences, listed in licences.