Works with WhatsApp
Listen records WhatsApp calls straight from your Mac, writes them down and works out who said what. Nothing joins the call, and the recording never leaves your computer.
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 WhatsApp 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 WhatsApp 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.
In a great many places WhatsApp is not the casual option, it is the business line: the number a client has, the thread a deal lives in, the call that decides something. Almost every meeting notetaker was built for a calendar full of Zoom links instead, so the people doing business this way have been left to write it down by hand.
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 the audio your Mac is playing along with your microphone, so a WhatsApp call is captured the same way any other sound on the machine is. It works with the WhatsApp desktop app and with WhatsApp Web in a browser.
No. Listen runs on your Mac and has no connection to WhatsApp, so WhatsApp has nothing to report. That puts telling them squarely on you, and in many places the law agrees. Say you are recording.
Yes, and it keeps them apart. Your microphone goes to one track and everything WhatsApp plays goes to another, which is also what lets Listen tell who was speaking when it writes the call up.
Yes. Listen takes the audio either way. The video is not recorded.
No. There is no plugin, no bot, no linked account and no permission to grant inside WhatsApp. Listen asks macOS for permission to record audio, and that is the whole setup.
Not from the phone. Listen for Mac records calls that happen on the Mac. If you take WhatsApp calls on your computer, that is the one you want.
Save the file and run it through Listen and you get a transcript back. That path needs no permissions at all.
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 WhatsApp or its owner. WhatsApp is named here only to describe what Listen records.
