Oats is a free, open-source meeting notes app for macOS. Its core idea is: meeting notes should not be the endpoint of meeting work, but the starting point. You only need to jot down a few lines during the meeting, and Oats will organize these scattered notes into clean notes based on what was actually said in the meeting.
Purpose and Positioning Oats is used to record meetings and automatically generate meeting notes. It starts when you begin a meeting, listens to audio directly on your local machine, requires no browser extension, and no bot joins the call. Audio streams are not sent to third-party servers.
Main Capabilities · Local recording: Records directly from your Mac's audio, with no bots and no third-party cloud involvement. · Universal compatibility: Works with Zoom, Meet, Teams, ordinary phone calls, and impromptu hallway conversations. Any audio your Mac can hear, Oats can turn into notes. · AI-written notes: After each meeting, generates a quick summary, a full summary, to-dos divided by person, and a quality score based on the conversation itself. · To-do management: Each meeting's action items are collected in the Todos tab. Checking an item in the notes closes it, so follow-ups are truly followed up on. · Searchable meeting library: Every recorded meeting goes into a searchable repository where you can ask questions across your entire history, such as "What did we decide about pricing?" · Local or cloud AI: You can run entirely on your local machine with local models to keep audio completely private; you can also connect an Ariso account for richer AI features. · Open source: All code is public on GitHub. You can read it, fork it, self-host it, or build your own features on top of it.
How to Use Start Oats and begin a meeting, and it will listen on your Mac. After the meeting ends, Oats immediately produces a structured summary and extracts every action item and its owner from what was actually said. Notes are saved by default as plain Markdown, with action items in Obsidian Tasks format, stored in the Obsidian vault of your choice, where they can be opened, synced, or moved anywhere. It supports one-click saving of meeting recordings and exporting notes. For sign-in, in addition to Google, you can also use a work Microsoft account. The sign-in entry point is in onboarding, settings, or the menu bar.
Featured Features · Speaker labeling: Each voice in the recording can be matched to a specific speaker, so the notes state who said it instead of "Speaker 2." This feature is currently available on the ariso.ai backend. · Update cadence: Oats releases a new version every week.
Use Cases Suitable for individuals or teams who need to take meeting notes, organize meeting minutes, and follow up on to-dos on macOS, especially users who value audio privacy and want their notes kept under their control in local Markdown form.
Limitations and Notes The app is only available for macOS. Fully local operation of recording and AI notes requires local models; richer AI features require connecting an Ariso account. Speaker labeling is currently only available on the ariso.ai backend. It is free, open source, with no seat limits, no trial countdown, and no paywall. Other features, pricing, or platform support not mentioned in the materials are not provided at this time.
