Granola

What is Granola?

Granola is a Mac app that functions as an AI notepad for people who spend a lot of time in meetings. It's built for founders, VCs, and tech professionals who need to keep track of conversations without a lot of extra work.

It's different from other transcription tools because it doesn't send a bot into your meeting. Instead, it transcribes your computer's audio directly from your desktop. This approach means it works across any meeting platform (Zoom, Meet, Teams) without you having to invite an extra participant.

The main idea is that you still take your own raw notes during the call. When the meeting is over, Granola combines your notes with the full, AI-generated transcript. It then creates an enhanced summary based on both inputs, giving you a record of what was said alongside what you thought was important.

Unlike Otter.ai or Fireflies.ai, which focus on transcription completeness, Granola prioritizes what happens _after_ the meeting. It structures your notes into actionable formats using customizable templates for different meeting types--sales calls, brainstorms, 1-on-1s. Your team gets consistency without manual reformatting.

The AI chat feature is genuinely useful. Instead of scrolling through a transcript, you can ask: "What did we commit to building?" or "Who owns the Q2 roadmap?" and get direct answers from your meeting context.

It also includes a chat feature that lets you ask questions about your past meetings. You can use this to find action items, recall decisions, or get summaries of your discussions from the past week. Granola also has customizable templates, so you can format your notes for common meeting types, like sales calls or team check-ins.

Key Features

• **Local Transcription**: Records and transcribes your Mac's audio directly, so no bot joins your calls.
• **Enhanced Note-Taking**: Combines your handwritten or typed notes with the full AI transcript.
• **AI-Generated Summaries**: Creates summaries based on both your notes and the meeting's content.
• **AI Chat**: A chat function that lets you query your entire meeting history to find information and to-dos.
• **Customizable Templates**: Set up specific note formats for different types of meetings.

Best For

Founders, product managers, developers, or anyone drowning in meetings who needs a fast way to turn discussions into actual tasks. Remote teams especially benefit because it centralizes what happened in a searchable, shareable format, people who missed the meeting can actually stay in the loop without watching a recording.

The privacy-first approach appeals to people who are tired of bots joining calls or worrying about transcripts sitting in some vendor's database.

Compared to broader tools like Notion or specialized recorders like Otter, Granola occupies a specific middle ground: it's not trying to be your entire knowledge base, and it's not just another transcriber. It's built for the specific problem of turning meeting chaos into follow-through.