Speakhold
Speakhold vs Otter.ai
Otter is a cloud service with a notetaker that joins your calls. Speakhold is an app on your Mac that records the call you are on, writes the notes, and deletes the audio.
Two different ideas
Otter uploads your meetings, transcribes them on its servers, and gives you a workspace: search, highlights, shared notes, a bot that joins calendar meetings on its own. Speakhold is local: your microphone and what the Mac is playing are recorded on your Mac, transcribed on the Neural Engine, and written to one markdown file with the notes at the top and the transcript underneath. Nothing is kept once the notes are written.
Where they differ
| Speakhold | Otter.ai | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, MIT licence | Free tier with monthly minute limits; paid plans per user |
| A bot joins the meeting | No | Yes, OtterPilot, visible to everyone |
| Where the audio goes | Yes, stays on your Mac and is deleted | Cloud |
| Works with | Any app that plays audio on the Mac | Zoom, Meet, Teams via the bot |
| Notes written by | Claude Code on your Mac, your own Claude key, or Apple Intelligence | Their models |
| Output | A markdown file in your own folder | Web app, mobile apps, team workspace |
| Also does dictation | Yes | No |
As of October 2026. Corrections welcome via pull request.
Why people switch
The bot in the call and the recording in someone else's cloud. Client work, legal, medical and anything under an NDA are hard to square with a third party in the room. The markdown file also goes straight into Obsidian, Notion or a repo with no export.
Why you might stay with Otter
Teams. Shared notes an hour later, search across a year of meetings, mobile recording, and a bot that turns up to meetings you forgot about. Speakhold is personal and local.
Does Speakhold join the meeting?
No. Nothing joins. It records on your Mac, which also means you should check your local consent rules.
How long can a meeting be?
Audio streams to disk during the call, so length is limited by free disk space, not memory. A 30-minute call is transcribed in a few minutes on Whisper, well under a minute on Parakeet.
Try it
Free · MIT · macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon · brew install --cask sturzael/tap/speakhold
Compared with Willow Voice · Wispr Flow · Superwhisper · MacWhisper · Fireflies · Otter · How to record a call without a bot