How Boswell turns your meetings into notes, all on your Mac
Boswell is a meeting-notes app for the Mac, built around one rule that shapes everything else: the work happens on your Mac, not on someone else's server. It records the conversation, transcribes both sides, and writes the summary and the action items, and the AI that does that reading runs on-device. No cloud model ever processes your meeting unless you go out of your way to turn one on. Your finished notes sync between your devices through your own private iCloud, which is your encrypted Apple account, not a server we run.
That on-device default is the difference. Most meeting tools send your audio, or your transcript, to a cloud service to be processed. Boswell doesn't. Here's what it does instead.
No bot joins your call
Plenty of meeting tools record by sending a guest. A bot shows up in the participant list, sits on someone else's server, and emails you a transcript later. Everyone on the call can see it listening, and a copy of your conversation now lives on infrastructure you don't control.
Boswell records from your own Mac. It captures your microphone and the system audio, the sound your Mac is already playing, straight from the operating system. Your video app never knows it's there, because nothing is added to the call. Two sides of the conversation, captured locally, with no stranger in the room.
Transcribed on your Mac
Capable speech-to-text used to mean a round trip to a data center. Not anymore. On Apple Silicon, Boswell transcribes the audio on the Mac's own hardware, fast enough to caption the conversation live and accurate enough that "local" no longer means "lesser."
Because nothing is reaching for the network, it works on a plane, in a basement conference room, on hotel Wi-Fi that can't load a webpage. Live captions scroll during the call, and a clean transcript comes together when you stop. None of it is uploaded, because there is no Boswell server to upload it to.
Summaries from on-device AI, not the cloud
A transcript is a wall of words. What you actually want is the summary, the decisions, and the action items, and pulling those out is a job for an AI model.
This is the moment most apps quietly ship your meeting off to a cloud model. Boswell uses the AI models built into your Mac instead. The summary, the highlights, and the action items are generated on-device, so the contents of your meeting don't have to leave the machine to be turned into notes. The same local-first rule that governs the recording governs the AI that reads it.
Cloud models are opt-in
Some people want a particular cloud model writing their summaries, and that's a choice you're free to make. Boswell lets you connect your own AI key from a provider you pick.
It's off by default and stays off until you set it up. Nothing reaches a cloud model unless you deliberately turn one on and choose it. Leave it alone and the entire pipeline, from recording to transcript to summary, runs on your Mac end to end.
Where your notes live
"On your Mac" deserves the honest version. Local-first doesn't mean the app never touches the network. It means the network is opt-in and narrow. If you connect a cloud provider, that reaches out because you told it to.
Your audio stays on the Mac that recorded it. Your notes sync through your own private iCloud, Apple's encrypted personal store on the account the rest of your Mac already uses, so they follow you between your devices without passing through a server we control.
The short version
Boswell records both sides of a meeting, transcribes it, and writes the notes, all on your Mac, with on-device AI doing the reading. Cloud models are there if you want them and silent if you don't.
We named the app after a biographer, someone whose whole craft was listening closely and writing things down without ever betraying a confidence. That's the standard we hold it to.
Want the precise version of what stays on your Mac and what doesn't? It's on our privacy page. Or just download it and record something.