Features

Detailed guide to all BuildBetter Local Recorder features — meeting recording, dictation, and screen recording in one app

Beta Software — The BuildBetter Local Recorder is currently in beta.

Features

The Local Recorder is three products in one app: a no-bot meeting recorder, a global dictation tool, and a native screen recorder. They share the same library, the same AI engine, and the same local-first privacy guarantees.

Meeting Recorder

No-bot, system-audio meeting capture with live transcription, templated summaries, and AI chat.

Dictation

Global hotkey-driven voice-to-text that works in any app, with cleanup and a snippets library.

Screen Recording

Native ScreenCaptureKit video with system audio, saved alongside meetings and dictation.

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Meeting Recorder

No-Bot Capture

The recorder never joins the call. It captures your microphone and the call’s system audio directly via macOS’s ScreenCaptureKit framework.

Source	What It Captures
Microphone	Your voice
System Audio	The other participants — from Zoom, Meet, Teams, Slack Huddles, Discord, Webex, or any app playing sound

Nothing appears in the participant list on the call. Nothing shows in the attendee log.

System audio capture requires the Screen Recording permission in macOS Privacy settings.

Meeting-Aware Auto-Start

The recorder watches for meetings and offers to record when it sees one.

Basic detection — no extra permissions:

• Detects running meeting apps
• Monitors microphone activity
• Checks network connections

Advanced detection — requires Automation permission:

• Checks browser URLs for meeting links
• More accurate for browser-based meetings

You can set thresholds for when the recorder prompts you to record vs. when it auto-starts on high-confidence matches. Auto-stop kicks in when the meeting ends, with a configurable grace period.

Live Transcription

Real-time speech-to-text with speaker identification. Click any line in the transcript to jump to that moment in playback.

Speakers appear in different colors, and you can relabel any speaker after the fact.

Notes That Enhance Themselves

Take rough notes during the call — the app combines them with the transcript afterward to produce a clean, well-structured summary. Notes are Markdown-formatted and saved as .md files alongside each recording.

Templates

Use a built-in summary template (discovery calls, 1:1s, standups) or author your own. Templates control the sections and prompts the summarizer applies to your recording.

Catch-Me-Up

Mid-call, ask for a 3-bullet summary of the last 5 minutes. Useful if you joined late or stepped away.

Chat With the Transcript

Ask questions about a recording after it’s finished:

"Summarize this meeting in bullet points."
"What action items were discussed?"
"What did [person] say about the timeline?"
"List all the decisions that were made."
"What questions were asked?"

Answers run against the full transcript and come back grounded in what was said.

Relink and Unlink

If the recorder attaches a recording to the wrong calendar event, relink it to the right one — or unlink it entirely and keep it as a standalone recording.

Organization

• Folders — group related recordings
• Search — find recordings by title or transcript content
• Sort and filter — by date, duration, or name
• Preview — see transcript snippets before opening

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Dictation

Press a hotkey anywhere on your Mac, speak, and the cleaned-up text lands at your cursor in any app.

Hotkeys

Three gestures, each configurable:

• Hold — dictate while holding; release to paste
• Tap — toggle dictation on with one tap, off with another
• Double-tap — alternative toggle gesture

Dictation Bar and Notch UI

Dictation has its own compact UI that shows live transcription while you speak — either a draggable bar or a notch-style overlay — so you can see what you’re dictating without a full window stealing focus.

Cleanup

After you stop dictating, the app can optionally clean the output:

• Remove filler words (um, uh, like)
• Add punctuation and paragraph breaks
• Apply custom cleanup instructions per context (tighter for Slack, looser for Google Docs, preserve jargon)

Snippets Library

Save dictated clips into a searchable library. Useful for recurring phrases, reusable descriptions, or clips you want to refine and reuse later.

Auto-Paste

Clean text is pasted at your cursor in whatever app you’re in — Slack, Gmail, Notion, Linear, Figma, VS Code, Cursor, Terminal, Messages, Safari, and thousands more. If macOS permissions block auto-paste, the app tells you exactly what to fix.

Multilingual Support

Pick a dictation model that matches the languages you speak. The app flags English-only models (like Whisper’s .en variants) when you’re trying to use them with non-English speech, and suggests multilingual alternatives.

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Screen Recording

ScreenCaptureKit-Powered

Native macOS screen recording using the same framework as QuickTime and Apple’s built-in screen sharing. Low overhead, hardware-encoded video (H.264 or HEVC), clean window/display/region source picker.

Requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later for the screen recording feature.

System Audio Included

Speaker audio is captured alongside the video automatically — no separate recording step needed.

Saved to Your Library

Screen recordings land in the same library as your meetings and dictation clips, so everything is searchable and organized in one place.

Good For

• Quick walkthroughs — hotkey, record, stop, share
• Demos during a meeting (combine with the meeting recorder)
• Bug reports and async updates

No account required, no upload prompt, no watermark.

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AI Engine: Pick Your Providers

The Local Recorder doesn’t lock you into one model. You can pick different providers for each role — transcription, chat, and cleanup — from a mix of local and cloud options.

Local Providers

Provider	Roles	Notes
Apple Intelligence	Transcription, chat, cleanup	Native macOS 26+. Fully on-device.
whisper.cpp	Transcription	Drop in any Whisper-compatible .bin model
llama.cpp	Chat, cleanup	Drop in any GGUF model (Llama, Qwen, Mistral, Phi, Gemma, DeepSeek, etc.)
Parakeet	Transcription	NVIDIA’s fast on-device transcription engine
Ollama	Chat, cleanup	Point at a local Ollama server for any pulled model
LM Studio	Chat, cleanup	Point at LM Studio’s OpenAI-compatible local server

Cloud Providers (Bring Your Own Keys)

Provider	Roles	Notes
OpenAI	Chat, cleanup	GPT-4.1, GPT-5 via your API key
Anthropic	Chat, cleanup	Claude Sonnet / Opus via your API key
Groq	Transcription, chat, cleanup	Ultra-fast inference
Deepgram	Transcription	Low-latency, strong multi-speaker accuracy
BuildBetter	Transcription, chat, cleanup	First-party cloud, optional sign-in

When you bring your own cloud key, traffic goes Mac → provider directly. BuildBetter is never in the path for BYOK traffic.

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Privacy & Data

Local-First by Default

Out of the box, nothing leaves your Mac:

• No account required
• No telemetry
• No background sync
• No shadow uploads

You can verify there are no outbound requests with a tool like Little Snitch when using local models only.

Flexible Storage

• Pick the folder where recordings are saved (defaults to ~/Documents/BuildBetter Recordings/)
• Set per-folder defaults
• Optional compression to save space
• Delete recordings anytime — they’re regular files on your disk

Hide From Screenshots

The recorder window can be marked so it appears black in screenshots and screen shares — useful when you’re recording a demo that shouldn’t include the recorder UI.

Optional BuildBetter Sync

If you want team features, you can optionally sync recordings to BuildBetter:

• Team-wide search across everyone’s recordings
• Shared summaries and notes
• Role-based access controls
• Integrations: Slack, Linear, Notion
• Cloud transcription included

The BuildBetter cloud path is SOC 2 Type II audited, HIPAA-ready with a BAA available, and GDPR/CCPA compliant.

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Window Modes

Notch Mode

Tucks into the MacBook notch area. Minimal visual footprint, expands on hover or when recording.

Floating Bar

Compact draggable window you can park anywhere on screen. Shows live transcript and quick controls.

Full Window

Dedicated app window with transcript, notes, and AI chat all visible at once.

Hide Until Meeting

Enable this to keep the recorder completely hidden until a meeting is detected. The app runs silently in the background and appears automatically when needed.

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Notion Export (Beta)

With the BYO Keys setup, you can export notes and summaries to Notion. Currently in beta.

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Data Storage

All data is stored locally on your Mac:

~/Documents/BuildBetter Recordings/
├── [Recording Name]/
│   ├── audio.m4a      # Audio file
│   ├── transcript.txt # Plain text transcript
│   └── notes.md       # Your notes
└── ...

Recording metadata is stored in a local SQLite database for fast searching. Your recordings are regular files — back them up with Time Machine, iCloud Drive, or any backup solution.

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Themes

• Dark Mode — easy on the eyes, matches macOS dark appearance
• Light Mode — bright interface for well-lit environments
• System — follows your macOS appearance setting

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Keyboard Shortcuts

Action	Shortcut
Start / Stop Recording	Configurable in Settings
Dictation hotkey	Configurable (hold / tap / double-tap)
Open Dashboard	Click dock icon
Show / Hide Floating Bar	Click menu bar icon