Get VidNotes for macOS
Universal binary for Apple Silicon and Intel. macOS 14.6 or later.
Upgrade to Scholar or Researcher with an in-app purchase. Apple handles billing, refunds, and updates.
Get it on the Mac App StoreSame app, no App Store. Download free, try it, then unlock with a license key bought here. Updates install from inside the app.
Download VidNotes (.dmg)Buy Pro · $79.99 — record & take notes on live Zoom, Teams and Meet sessionsTry free before you buy — all sales final, except where required by law or if VidNotes doesn’t work on your Mac. Terms · Lost your license key?
VidNotes is fully self-contained. Transcription (WhisperKit) and AI briefs (Apple MLX) ship inside the app and download their model weights on first use — no Homebrew, no Python, no separate servers.
Optional: add an OpenAI / Anthropic / Gemini API key in Settings if you'd rather route AI to a cloud provider.
VidNotes plays YouTube via embed. Many YouTube videos can't be auto-transcribed — Apple's sandbox prevents downloading their audio, and YouTube's PoToken now blocks most third-party caption scrapers. You have three options inside the app:
- Use existing public captions — works for most MIT / news / official-channel videos. Click Transcribe.
- Download the video as MP4 and drop it in — full WhisperKit transcription on-device.
- Paste a transcript from anywhere (YouTube's own "Show transcript" button works).