{"slug": "i-built-a-local-free-granola-alternative", "title": "I built a local, free Granola alternative", "summary": "Hobnob, a free and open-source desktop app, records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings entirely on a user's laptop without cloud dependency or internet. The app runs local AI models for transcription and summarization, ensuring data privacy, and is available for macOS and Linux.", "body_md": "Hobnob records, transcribes, and summarizes your meetings, all on your laptop. No cloud, no sign-up, no internet. Just you and your friendly house-goblin.\n\nFree for everyone.\n[Support the project](https://ko-fi.com/shobyde) if it helps you.\n\nNo accounts, no cloud, no telemetry. Your meetings never leave your laptop.\n\nReal-time transcription as everyone speaks, with speaker labels baked right in.\n\nStructured meeting notes with decisions, action items, and open questions, locally run.\n\nAsk questions while it's happening. Hobnob's bundled LLM answers from the transcript.\n\nAuto-titles meetings from your calendar. 5-minute heads-up with one-click join.\n\nSwap Whisper models. Pick your own LLM GGUF. Full control over what runs locally.\n\nNative desktop app for Apple Silicon and Linux. AppImage, .deb, and .pacman packages.\n\nRecordings, transcripts, and summaries are saved on your machine. Whisper runs locally for transcription. The bundled LLM runs locally for summaries and chat. No API keys, no telemetry, no accounts.\n\nHit record. Hobnob captures your mic and system audio. Live captions appear instantly.\n\nWhen the meeting ends, Whisper runs a high-accuracy pass. Speaker labels are applied automatically.\n\nHobnob scribbles your notes with decisions, action items, and questions. Everything stays on your machine.\n\nFree to download and use. ~8 GB RAM recommended. Models download on first run.\n\nmacOS 13+ (Apple Silicon)\n\nHobnob-mac.zip\n\nNot signed with an Apple developer certificate.\n[How to allow it.](about.html)\n\nAny modern distro", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-a-local-free-granola-alternative", "canonical_source": "https://hobnob.info/", "published_at": "2026-06-13 16:25:10+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-13 16:46:53.951590+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools", "developer-tools", "artificial-intelligence", "large-language-models", "natural-language-processing"], "entities": ["Hobnob", "Whisper", "Apple Silicon", "Linux", "AppImage", "Ko-fi"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-a-local-free-granola-alternative", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-a-local-free-granola-alternative.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-a-local-free-granola-alternative.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-a-local-free-granola-alternative.jsonld"}}