Call transcription with Granola

I use Granola for call transcription.

Things I like

1. You don't have to invite it to meetings. It just runs on your computer (Mac or Windows) and offers to start automatically when you join a call. No faff, and no ominous black boxes in the video call.

2. Works for any app, including WhatsApp and Signal.

3. Summary notes within 3-5 seconds of the call. And they're easy to edit manually.

4. Solid iPhone and iPad apps to record in-person meetings.

5. One-click share by link, email, copy-paste, Slack etc. Links can be "visible to anyone with the link" or "visible to anyone on my team".

6. Easy to customise the summary format for different call types (e.g. team meeting, user interview).

7. Easy to enter your own notes. You can do it during the meeting, and they'll influence the summary. ¹

8. Folders: you can chat with a folder full of notes, and share the folder to your team.

9. One-click to draft a follow-up email.

10. Integrations so you can automatically send summaries to Notion, Slack, etc, or have them trigger only when you add the notes to a folder.

11. Audio and video is not saved. That's good for me. Technically I think that means you're not recording the call, but I always seek consent regardless (usually before the call via a field on my calendar link).

Things I don't like

1. Call summaries are good, but not best in class. I prefer the summaries I get from copy-pasting the raw transcript into ChatGPT o3.

2. Hard to copy the raw transcript: requires three clicks!

3. Transcription accuracy is good, but it's not best in class.

4. Default privacy setting: when you install, your meeting notes are "visibile to anyone with the link" by default. You can change this in the settings.

Screencast demo

Limitations

1. There's no Android app.

2. The integrations can only send summary notes, not the raw transcript. The Zapier integration is supposed to include the raw transcript, but in my tests it doesn't (support request pending).

3. Transcription happens in the cloud, not locally on your computer. That's fine for most calls, but not for ultra-sensitive stuff.

The competition

There are loads of options. The strongest competitors include Circleback, Fathom, Fireflies and Otter.ai.

Some people I know love Granola. I've not heard acquaintances express love for the competitors.

Use cases vary, though. Granola is a non-starter if you need to save the audio or video.

It's hard to track this crowded space: if you try other platforms, I'd love to hear how you get on.

Appendix 1. A future workflow

When they fix limitation (2), I'll probably use Zapier to automate the following workflow:

1. Trigger: add note to Granola folder.

2. Send raw transcript to ChatGPT (to get a better summary).

3. Add summary and raw transcript to the relevant meeting doc.

4. Notify the meeting attendee.