What it can't do.

Deliberate — it will never do these

It does not summarize your meeting. No action items, no "key takeaways", no built-in model interpreting what you said. You already pay for Claude or ChatGPT and they are better at it than any built-in template. Heliotype's job ends at clean, named, speaker-labeled text.

It does not put a bot in your call. Which also means it cannot record a meeting you are not in. Your Mac has to be on the call, because your Mac is the recorder.

It has no account and no cloud. No shared workspace, no team library, no admin console, no SSO, no web app to log into. One person, one Mac, files on disk.

It does not phone home. No telemetry, no analytics, no crash reporting, and nothing runs in the background reporting on you. Three things reach the network, each of them only because you asked: the audio you send for transcription; a one-off download of the ffmpeg audio tool from its official host, the first time it is needed, if your build didn't ship with it; and Settings → Check for Updates…, which fetches a small static version file the moment you click it — never at launch, never on a timer. None of the three carries anything about you.

Constraints — real, and some are temporary

Transcription happens in the cloud, not on your Mac. Under your own AssemblyAI key, only at the moment you ask for a transcript, and only the extracted audio track. But it does leave the machine, and if that is a dealbreaker, wait for the on-device engine — the top roadmap item, with no date promised.

Apple Silicon only, macOS 15+ to record. Transcribing existing files works on macOS 13+. There is no Intel build, no Windows, no iOS, no web version, and none are planned.

No live transcription. Nothing appears during the call; transcription starts when you stop recording.

Automated transcription is not perfect. Crosstalk, heavy accents, background noise and technical jargon all cost accuracy, and speaker labels can drift when people talk over each other. Spot-check anything you intend to quote.

Calendar naming needs a calendar. Names come from the macOS Calendar event covering the meeting. No event, no permission, or a calendar that only lives in a work web app your Mac isn't signed into, and recordings fall back to a dated name without the meeting title.

It is not on the Mac App Store and cannot be — the audio process tap is incompatible with the App Sandbox. You download a signed, notarized disk image directly.

We make no compliance claims. No HIPAA, no SOC 2, no certifications. If your work requires them, evaluate the chain yourself — including AssemblyAI, whom you contract with directly.

Recording law is your responsibility. Nothing joins the call, but consent rules still apply and vary by country and US state. Tell people you are recording.

Buy something else if…

• You want meeting summaries and action items generated for you.
• You need recordings of meetings you don't attend.
• Your team needs one shared, searchable, permissioned archive.
• You are on Windows, or on an Intel Mac.
• Nothing about your meetings may leave your machine, today.

If you're weighing it against a specific tool, the comparisons are written the same way: Granola, Otter, Fathom.