Works with FaceTime
Listen records FaceTime calls on your Mac, writes them down and works out who spoke. No bot, no account, and nothing leaves the machine.
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 FaceTime plays goes to another, which is what lets Listen tell the voices apart afterwards.
Why this one is different
Meeting notetakers work by being invited into a call as a participant. A FaceTime call has no invitation to send, which is why most notetakers simply do not cover it. Listen never needed one: it records what your Mac is already playing, so the call is an ordinary sound on your machine and nothing has to let it in.
FaceTime has no notetaker ecosystem at all, because there is nothing for a notetaker to join. That leaves anybody doing real work over FaceTime with a screen recording at best. Listen treats it as what it is: audio your Mac is playing, and therefore audio it can write down.
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 everything your Mac plays, which includes the other side of a FaceTime call. macOS screen recording is not involved and is not needed.
No. Listen is about what was said, so it keeps the audio and the transcript rather than a video file the size of the meeting.
FaceTime has nothing to tell them, because Listen is not part of the call. Tell them yourself.
Yes. Everyone else arrives on one track and Listen separates the voices on it, so the transcript still says who said what.
Not from the phone. This records calls that happen on your Mac.
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 FaceTime or its owner. FaceTime is named here only to describe what Listen records.
