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Yogurt: Free, Private AI Meeting Notes on Your Computer
Yogurt's a free Granola alternative that runs AI meeting notes locally. Here's how it works, what to download and the recording notice you'll need.
Paying $14 a month for AI meeting notes? Yogurt's free, and the AI runs on your computer. Frigade launched this open-source desktop app this week. Granola Business costs $14 per user per month. Yogurt uses the MIT license and doesn't need an account.
What it is
Yogurt records calls, writes live transcripts and summaries, and answers questions across meetings with links to the source. No bot joins the call. It captures your microphone and the sound playing on your computer.
The repo was created on Nov 10, 2026. The maker posted it on Show HN on Nov 11 as a free, private, open-source alternative to Granola. At the Nov 12 check, around 05:00 ET, that post had 241 points and the repo had 650 stars.
How it works, step by step
- Install Yogurt and download the AI models. After that one-time download, it works offline.
- Tell the other people on the call you're recording. Yogurt records your mic and computer audio without a meeting bot.
- Turn the recording into text on your computer. Yogurt uses whisper.cpp for transcription, with Whisper large-v3-turbo or a smaller model. Supported Macs can also use Apple's SpeechAnalyzer.
- Let a local model write the summary. Yogurt runs an open-weight model from the Gemma 4, gpt-oss or Qwen3 families through llama.cpp, chosen for your hardware.
- Ask questions across your meetings. Yogurt's answers link to the source. You can copy notes or transcripts, save both as Markdown, or back up to a ZIP file.
The help docs say meeting audio, transcripts and AI processing stay on your computer. They say Yogurt doesn't upload meetings and has no telemetry. It does go online for model downloads from Hugging Face and update checks from GitHub.
What it costs and what you need
Yogurt's free under the MIT license. No account needed. You'll need at least 8 GB of memory and space for the models. The first notes model is about 5 GB. The best one your computer can run well can be 14 GB or more.
Supported systems are macOS 14.4 or later on Apple Silicon, Windows 10 version 2004 or later on x64, and Ubuntu 22.04 or later on x64 through an AppImage.
For comparison, Granola Business is $14 per user per month with unlimited meeting history. Granola also offers a free Basic plan with 30 days of meeting history. Granola has bot-free device-audio capture on all plans, too.
The catch
Yogurt's own FAQ says to tell people you're recording. A bot won't appear in the call to signal that for you.
Budget for the model download before trying it offline. Speaker names and calendar support are Mac only for now. The Windows installer isn't signed yet.
The optional local MCP server is off by default. It gives read-only access to meetings, notes and transcripts. While it's enabled, any app running under your account can read that data because there's no per-app token. An app using that access may send what it reads to its own online model, according to Yogurt's docs.
The builder angle (my opinion, no income guaranteed)
I'd sell a private meeting-notes setup to small firms that want meeting transcription and AI notes to run on their own computers. Think law offices, accountants or therapists.
I'd install Yogurt and its models on each laptop, write a recording consent line for staff to use on every call, and organize exported notes in a folder per client. I'd include ZIP backups and leave MCP access off.
That's my proposed service. The deliverable is a working setup and a clear routine for recording, saving and finding client notes.
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