Transcribe and Summarize meetings with a 100% offline secure app
Shmeetings is a simple desktop app that transcribes audio and generates a custom summary using only local AI processing on your computer.
100% Local AI Processing
Unlike cloud-based AI meeting assistants that send your audio to remote servers, Shmeetings runs entirely on your computer using trusted open-source AI models.
Your meetings never leave your device. Shmeetings uses OpenAI's Whisper for transcription and Meta's Llama (via Ollama) for summaries - the same powerful AI technology used by major companies, but running privately on your machine.
No internet required. No data shared. Complete control.
Auto Start/Stop
Shmeetings can listen for sustained audio and start and stop capturing a meeting on its own. Set it and forget it, your meeting assistant can run fully automatic.
Fine-tune the audio sensitivity thresholds to match your environment and microphone. Once configured, Shmeetings intelligently detects when conversations begin and end.
Auto Summarize
When a meeting ends, Shmeetings can automatically summarize the transcription using only local AI processing on your computer.
AI processing is powered by Ollama and a Llama open-source model running locally on your computer, completely offline.
Auto Email
For a fully automatic meeting assistant, you can email yourself every meeting transcription and summary as it's generated. This option uses your own mail server settings, so it requires some advanced knowledge.
Auto email does send your transcription and summary through your mail server, so be aware that this option makes your transcription and summary not 100% offline. But you're using your own mail server and email account.
Customize Everything With Complete Privacy
Since Shmeetings runs entirely on your computer, you can be as specific as you want with your prompts and include any sensitive documents. Your data never leaves your device.
Custom Summary Prompt
Create a meeting summary prompt completely custom to you and your work.
For example:
"I run a shop that sells earrings, called Ring Bling. Summarize the meeting transcription and create a list of to do's for me and my employees Stacy, Jared, and Becky."
"I'm a product manager at a SaaS company. Focus on feature requests, bug reports, and customer feedback. Group action items by engineering, design, and marketing teams."
Custom Context Files
Include relevant files to help with the meeting summary, without worrying about privacy or security.
For example:
- • A text file that summarizes your work, current projects, goals, and a list of colleagues.
- • A CSV file of your sales history.
- • Your website homepage .html file
- • Saved emails and documents
- • Any other relevant files you want to include
Don't Trust Cloud Meeting Assistants? Shmeetings is the Alternative
Many companies don't trust sending sensitive meeting information to AI servers. Shmeetings offers a perfect solution - transcribe and summarize your work meetings while keeping everything local and secure.
With Auto Start/Stop, Auto Summarize, and Auto Email enabled, you can leave Shmeetings running without any interaction needed.
How Shmeetings Compares
Complete privacy without compromising on features
| Feature | Shmeetings | Cloud Meeting Assistants | Manual Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100% Offline Processing | |||
| Automatic Transcription | |||
| AI Summaries | |||
| Custom Context Files | |||
| Works Without Internet | |||
| No Monthly Fees | |||
| Complete Data Privacy |
Detailed Comparisons
Frequently Asked Questions
Setup & Installation
Any silicon Mac or PC can run the local AI models to transcribe and summarize a meeting. Shmeetings uses a small Whisper model for the transcription, which doesn't require a lot of processing power.
To generate a meeting summary, a slower computer can take upwards of two minutes to process. But since we're not in a hurry, there's no need for an ultra expensive and fast computer.
- Operating System: macOS 11+ or Windows 10+ (Windows version of Shmeetings is coming soon)
- Storage: 6GB free space (for Whisper model and Ollama and Llama 3 model)
- RAM: 8GB minimum, 16GB recommended
- Processor: Apple Silicon for Mac, any modern processor for Windows
The app downloads and installs:
- Ollama (180MB) - The AI engine
- Llama 3 Model (4.9GB) - The AI model for summarization
These are one-time downloads that enable completely offline operation.
No, these components are essential. Whisper handles transcription and Llama 3 generates the summaries. Without them, the app cannot function.
We are testing the Windows version currently and we'll be releasing it soon, stay tuned!
Usage Questions
Shmeetings works with any meeting platform - Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, WebEx, or even in-person meetings. It simply transcribes whatever audio your microphone picks up, regardless of the source.
All transcripts and summaries are stored locally on your computer in a folder you choose. You have complete control over your data - backup, delete, or move files as needed. The app never uploads or syncs your data anywhere.
No! Shmeetings transcribes any audio from your microphone. You can be a participant, host, or even transcribe in-person meetings.
Just start recording when you join. Shmeetings will transcribe from that point forward. You'll only miss what happened before you started recording. Or enable Auto Start/Stop so you never have to worry about remembering to start recording.
No, it's completely invisible to other meeting participants. It simply listens to your microphone like any other app.
Shmeetings is designed for audio transcription and summarization only. This keeps the app lightweight and ensures maximum privacy.
The raw transcript can be edited in any text editor. However, if you want to regenerate the summary after editing, you'd need to re-process the edited transcript. You can do that by dragging the text file into the Shmeetings Live Transcription window, and then generate the summary.
Technical Questions
Due to OS security restrictions, apps need special permissions to capture system audio. Using a microphone input ensures compatibility across all platforms and meeting apps.
Standard microphone quality is fine. The Whisper model is trained on various audio qualities and handles background noise reasonably well.
There's no hard limit, but very long recordings (3+ hours) may take longer to process and use more memory during transcription.
Yes! You can drag a previously transcribed meeting text file into the Shmeetings Live Transcription window and then re-generate the summary.
We are looking at a variety of solutions to split the audio input and output between a work computer and personal computer, and we'll add our recommendation here when we have identified a good option.
Yes! If you enable Auto Start/Stop, Auto Summary, and Auto Email, you can minimize and leave Shmeetings running while it captures meetings and provides you custom summaries.
Privacy & Security
Yes, 100%. Shmeetings runs entirely offline on your computer. No audio, transcripts, or summaries are ever sent to any servers. Your meeting data never leaves your machine.
The only exception is if you use the Auto Email feature to automatically email yourself the meeting transcriptions and summaries. But the feature utilizes your own mail server (like Outlook, Gmail, or any other mail server), rather than going through Shmeetings.
Your transcript files remain on your computer wherever you saved them. Only the app and AI models are removed.
Yes, any microphone input will work. You can see the microphone that Shmeetings is using by opening Sensitivity Settings and checking the Audio Input. To adjust the mic level, use your system microphone input settings.
No, Shmeetings does not save any audio files. It records 5 seconds of audio at a time for transcription purposes, and then automatically discards the audio chunks as the meeting progresses.
Troubleshooting
Shmeetings uses a small Whisper model and depends on a clear microphone signal for an accurate transcription, but it doesn't get everything right. However, the AI generated summary doesn't need a perfect transcription to process the meeting.
The best approach is to be as specific as possible in the Summary Instructions (AI prompt), and add a context file with:
- Project-specific terminology
- Team member names
- Common acronyms in your organization
- Desired summary format/structure
The first launch can take longer as it initializes the AI models, but subsequent launches should be faster. Still, Shmeetings runs the Whisper and Ollama/Llama AI models locally on your computer, which means it is slower than an app that uses cloud services, but the trade off is no data ever leaves your computer.
Licensing & Support
Yes, you can install Shmeetings on more than one computer, but we ask you to purchase a license for each computer you intend to run Shmeetings on.
Please contact us for any questions or feedback.
Yes, you can choose the number of licenses you need at checkout.
Yes! Your one-time purchase includes all future updates. As we improve the app, add features, and fix bugs, you'll get these updates at no additional cost. Updates are optional - you control when to update.
Shmeetings is intended to be very simple and affordable, which means it doesn't have a suite of features that other apps might have, including:
- Multiple language transcription (currently English only)
- Whisper and Ollama model selection
- Cloud backup/sync
- Mobile app
- Video recording
- Direct calendar integration
- Automatic speaker identification
- Meeting bot inside Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, etc.
Simple, One-Time Pricing
No subscriptions. Buy once, use forever.
One-time purchase
- Lifetime license
- All features included
- Free updates
- Email support