Works with Discord
Listen records Discord calls from your Mac and transcribes them there. No recording bot in the channel, and nothing uploaded to anybody.
This looks like an Intel Mac, and Listen will not run on it.
Listen transcribes on your own machine, and that needs the Neural Engine Apple introduced with the M1 in late 2020. There is no Intel version, and there is no version that would work.
Open the Apple menu and choose About This Mac. If it says Chip rather than Processor, this guess is wrong and you can download Listen as normal.
How it works
The menu bar is still there for a call it did not catch, or one you want running before anybody has joined. Either way your microphone goes to one track and everything Discord plays goes to another, which is what lets Listen tell the voices apart afterwards.
Why this one is different
A Discord call tends to start because somebody had a question, not because it was in a calendar a week ago. Notetakers that work from your calendar never see those, so the conversations that actually decide things are the ones that go unrecorded. Listen starts from the menu bar, in the second you need it.
The usual way to record a Discord call is to invite a bot into the voice channel, which everybody can see, which needs permissions on the server, and which sends the audio somewhere else. Listen records your own machine instead, so it works on a server you do not administer and on a direct call with one person.
After the call
Give the call your attention, not your notepad. Listen writes it up on your Mac's own chip, works out who spoke, and remembers the voices, so the regulars name themselves after the first time.
Privacy
There is no Listen server, because there are no servers. The recording, the transcript and the names on it are all made on your own computer. No account, and nothing reports back beyond anonymous usage statistics, on by default and turned off in Settings whenever you like.
Listen ships a machine-readable list of every connection it is allowed to make, inside the app itself, so none of that has to be taken on trust. What runs where sets out every connection it can make and how to check each one yourself, and there are answers ready for a privacy or HIPAA review.
Questions
Yes. Listen records your microphone and the audio Discord is playing, so nothing is added to the voice channel and no server permissions are needed.
Yes. It makes no difference to Listen where the call is happening.
No. Everyone on the far side shares a track, and Listen separates the voices on it, so you can name each of them once.
No. Nothing is installed on the server.
No. Listen keeps the audio and the transcript.
Get Listen
Free to download, and free to record for as long as you like. Apple silicon, macOS 14 or later. The speech model is about 2.5 GB and downloads once, the first time you run it.
Also works with
Listen is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Discord or its owner. Discord is named here only to describe what Listen records.
