Otter alternative
A private Otter alternative with no bot in your calls
Nootle records meetings directly on your Mac, so no bot joins the call, and transcribes them there, so the audio is never uploaded. It’s free and open source.
Why people switch from Otter
Nothing joins the meeting
Nootle records your microphone and your Mac’s system audio directly. There’s no extra participant in the call. It works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Slack, FaceTime and Discord.
Audio never leaves your Mac
Transcription runs on your Mac with NVIDIA Parakeet. Recordings and transcripts are stored only on your Mac, and the app sends no analytics or crash reports.
A built-in way to tell people they’re recorded
When a recording starts, Nootle offers a message to paste into the meeting chat telling participants they’re being recorded, and keeps a record that you told them. Otter faced a class action in 2025 over recording people without their consent.
Ask across every meeting
Ask a question and get an answer drawn from all your meetings, with citations back to the transcript. Search combines keywords and meaning. A People page collects everyone you’ve met with, and “What did I miss?” catches you up during a meeting.
Bring your Otter history
Import transcripts exported from Otter as SRT, VTT, TXT or Markdown. Export every meeting as Markdown whenever you like.
Nootle vs Otter
| Nootle | Otter | |
|---|---|---|
| How it records | On your Mac; no bot joins | A bot joins the call (a desktop app is also available) |
| Where processing happens | Transcription on your Mac | In the cloud |
| Price | Free, open source (MIT) | Free plan; paid plans from $8.33/month billed annually |
Otter details as of October 2026.
Questions
Can I import my Otter transcripts?
Yes. Export them from Otter and import them into Nootle as SRT, VTT, TXT or Markdown. They’re searchable alongside everything you record in Nootle.
Who does Nootle send my meeting content to?
Audio is never uploaded and transcripts are stored only on your Mac. Summaries, chat and action items go to the AI provider you pick: local Ollama models, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Groq, OpenRouter or AWS Bedrock with your own key, or your Claude or ChatGPT subscription through Claude Code or Codex CLI. Turn on Local-only mode and meeting content only goes to local models.
Does Nootle tell other people on the call?
Nootle doesn’t appear in the call, so it’s up to you. When a recording starts it offers a ready-made message to paste into the meeting chat, and records that you sent it.
What do I need to run it?
A Mac with Apple Silicon running macOS 14 or later. Nootle is free.
Try Nootle free
Free and open source under the MIT license. Requires macOS 14 or later on Apple Silicon.
Download for MacOr install with Homebrew:
brew tap michellemayes/nootle https://github.com/michellemayes/nootle && brew install --cask nootle