My Man is a free, open-source menu-bar app that combines meeting notes, voice dictation, screenshots, screen recording, and quick notes in one place. Transcription, OCR, and translation run on-device, everything you capture is searchable from one hotkey, and it's all saved as plain markdown files you own.
One app instead of four
Each pillar of My Man does the everyday job of a tool you may already pay for — free and open source, with everything landing in one searchable place on your Mac.
Meeting notes with transcripts, AI summaries, and action items — transcribed on-device, with no bot joining your call.
Speak into any app and get clean, AI-polished text — with speech models that run entirely on your Mac.
Region capture, a full annotation editor, text selection in screenshots, and cloud-free screen recording.
Quick markdown notes stored as plain local files in a git repo — readable by you, your editor, or any AI agent.
Notes, video recording, tasks pulled from your meetings, and calendar management — all in the same app, all searchable.
The launcher
Press ⌥ Space and My Man opens a command palette with universal search across your notes, meeting transcripts, screenshot text (OCR), and dictation history — keyword and semantic search combined, ranked by relevance and what you actually click. Your tasks sit on the left, your calendar on the right, with join links for upcoming meetings.
Notes, transcripts, screenshots, and dictations in one index. Type a word someone said in a meeting, or a word that was on your screen — it comes back.
Finds what you meant, not just what you typed, and learns from your own click history to rank what you reach for most.
A tasks panel and a 7-day calendar flank the launcher — AI pulls action items out of meetings and notes, and meeting join links are one click away.
Meetings
My Man detects meetings in Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Webex, Slack huddles, Discord, and FaceTime, and transcribes them locally on your Mac. It starts listening 45 seconds before a calendar meeting so you never lose the opening — but capture is consent-first: nothing is saved unless you click to keep it, and recording stops automatically when everyone hangs up.
Transcripts with speaker names and timestamps, so "who said that?" has an answer.
Automatic snapshots of screen shares land in your notes alongside the words being spoken.
Summary, key points, and action items generated on-device after each meeting — editable like any note.
A view of who you meet with, built from your own history — not a CRM in the cloud.
Looking for an open-source Granola alternative that keeps audio on your machine? This is that: same effortless meeting notes, but open source, transcribed on-device, and saved as local files.
Dictation
Hold Left ⌘, say what you're thinking, and release — My Man types clean text into whatever app you're in. Speech models run entirely on-device (nothing leaves the Mac), it works even when you whisper, and AI cleanup strips fillers and self-corrections, formats numbers, and assembles email addresses. A custom vocabulary learns names and jargon from your own notes and meetings, so it spells your coworkers and your projects right.
If you've tried Wispr Flow and wished it were local-only, this is the open-source Wispr Flow alternative: the same speak-anywhere workflow, with on-device models and source code you can read.
Screenshots
Grab any region with ⌥ ⇧ 2 and edit in place: arrows, boxes, highlight, text, pixelate, crop, rounded corners, and one-click background removal. Select and copy text straight out of any screenshot, Apple-Photos-style. And when a screenshot is in another language, in-place translation redraws it in yours.
An open-source CleanShot X alternative that also feeds every captured word into your searchable brain.
Screen recording
Drag out any region — or take the whole screen — and record with a persistent frame outline, an optional webcam bubble, your mic, and system audio. Recordings are saved as local files you own: no upload step, no accounts, no links that expire. An open-source Loom alternative — everything a Loom recording does for you, minus the part where your screen lives on someone else's server.
Notes
Hit ⌥ Space, type, hit ⏎ — captured. Notes open in a WYSIWYG markdown editor with proper headings, bullets, and inline formatting, and they're instantly searchable next to everything else you've saved.
The Brain
Everything My Man captures — notes, meeting transcripts and summaries, dictations, screenshot text — lands in ~/MyManBrain as plain markdown in a local git repository. It's agent-first by design: point Claude or any LLM at the folder and it can read your whole working memory. No export button, no proprietary database, no lock-in. Your data, in files, forever.
Private by default
FAQ
No — all transcription runs on-device using local speech models. Your meeting audio, dictation, screenshot text, and translations never leave your Mac.
No — My Man listens locally on your Mac, so no bot ever joins your call. Capture is consent-first: it can start listening before a meeting, but nothing is saved unless you click to keep it.
My Man runs on macOS 14.2 or later, on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. Screen recording and screenshot translation require macOS 15 or later.
My Man is a free direct download today. There is no account, no sign-up, and no subscription required to use it.
My Man updates itself silently in the background. Updates are never applied while you are recording a meeting or your screen, so a call is never interrupted.
Yes — everything My Man captures is saved as plain markdown files in a local git repository (~/MyManBrain). Point Claude or any LLM at that folder and it can read your notes, transcripts, and screenshot text directly.
Yes — My Man is open source. The full source code is on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license, so you can read exactly what runs on your Mac, audit the on-device AI pipeline, and file issues or contribute.
My Man is an open-source Granola alternative for Mac: effortless AI meeting notes with transcripts, summaries, and action items, transcribed on-device with no bot joining the call and no cloud account.
My Man is an open-source Wispr Flow alternative: hold a key, speak into any Mac app, and get clean AI-polished text. Speech models run entirely on-device, and the source code is public on GitHub.
My Man is open source, transcribes meetings on-device, and stores everything as local files, with no bot joining the call and no cloud account. It also goes beyond meetings, bundling dictation, screenshots, screen recording, and notes in the same app.
Recordings and screenshots are saved as local files you own — there are no cloud links that can expire and no upload step. You still get a full annotation editor, text selection in screenshots, webcam bubble, and system-audio capture.
Free and open source. No account. Everything stays on your Mac.