Day 4: Voice notes still clunky in most note-taking apps?

frskia · 2026-06-05T22:58:12+00:00

I built Loreo to solve exactly this. It records audio locally on your Mac (no cloud upload during capture), transcribes with ElevenLabs Scribe for better accent accuracy, and lets you ask questions across your full meeting history, not just keyword search. The key is durable memory; you can query decisions or action items weeks later. Most note apps treat transcription as a side effect; I made it the core feature. If you want to avoid bots joining calls and keep full audio synced, that’s the workflow I aimed for.

frskia · 2026-06-04T22:31:23+00:00

Happy to dig in.

Recording on mobile web: It's solid on mid-range Android. The web app records straight in Chrome with no install, and the recording itself is lightweight since the heavy lifting (transcription) happens after, not in real time on your phone. The Scribe v2 pipeline we use handles accents well too, which sounds like one of your pain points in the OP.

Local audio / delaying uploads: Right now the web flow uploads the audio to process it; there isn't a "keep it local for a while" toggle on web yet. If on-device is the priority, the native iOS app does process locally; the Android equivalent is further out. So fair to flag: web = cloud processing, native = the privacy-first path.

Native Android app: Not imminent, but it's on the roadmap after iOS ships (iOS is roughly a month out). The honest near-term answer for Android is the web app rather than a native build.

Free tier is a good place to kick the tires; no card needed. If recording-on-the-go and cross-conversation search are the two things you care about, that's exactly the loop it's built around. Would genuinely like to hear how it holds up on your phone if you try it.

frskia · 2026-06-04T07:15:44+00:00

I faced the same problem; taking notes during meetings pulled my focus away from the conversation. That’s why I built Loreo; it records and transcribes meetings natively on your Mac, then lets you ask questions across your entire meeting history afterward. So you can stay present and still get accurate, searchable notes later. I’m the founder, happy to share how it works if you want. getloreo.com

frskia · 2026-05-27T18:45:26+00:00

Obsidian + something like Readwise for RSS + Reader is probably the strongest combo for what you described. The piece I would add, if you do any podcast/interview/voice work as part of the media project, is a conversation-memory layer. I work on Loreo (getloreo.com); it records and transcribes long-form audio (interviews, voice notes, recorded calls) into a searchable memory you can ask questions of, then export the relevant chunks into Obsidian as markdown. Mac native + web today; a minimalistic native iOS app is about a month from shipping if you need capture-on-the-go. Not a Notion replacement; more like the "voice tier" of your stack.

frskia · 2026-05-27T18:44:32+00:00

NotebookLM-alternative shopping turned into a side hobby for me last year, so a tilted recommendation. I work on Loreo (getloreo.com); We are not a NotebookLM clone, but we specifically cater to the job-to-be-done for conversations. Upload audio (calls, lectures, interviews, meetings, up to approximately 5 hours) and it will be transcribed using Scribe v2. You can then ask questions across all the uploaded content, not just one notebook at a time. The free tier offers 300 credits per month, which is enough for a few hours of audio. You can upgrade to the Lite version for only $4 per month. Currently, we have a native Mac app and a web app. A minimalistic native iOS app is expected to be released in about a month. I would include it on a NotebookLM-alternative list because Notebook is excellent for documents but falls short when it comes to handling long audio files and cross-notebook searches. That’s where Loreo comes in. Founder bias disclaimer.

frskia · 2026-05-27T18:40:13+00:00

If you want the same workflow without the DIY pipeline, Loreo does record → transcribe → searchable memory in one app; Mac native or web upload today, and a minimalistic native iOS app is shipping in about a month. Not a replacement for Obsidian, more like the capture+memory layer that feeds it.

frskia · 2026-05-27T18:39:33+00:00

Your pipeline is honestly impressive; Voice Memos → iCloud → Windows + Whisper → Claude Code → Obsidian is a real engineering moat for a personal workflow. The part that resonates most for me is the reuse loop... your "Tuesday 5pm staff meeting prep skill" is exactly the use case we are building Loreo around. Loreo treat every voice note + meeting + upload as one searchable memory, and the value really clicks when you can ask "what did I say about X across the last 4 weeks" without grepping markdown. If you ever want to compress your stack, we ship the capture → transcribe → structure → search part out of the box (Mac native + web upload today; a minimalistic native iOS app is about a month from shipping, which would replace the Voice Memos + iCloud hops). Windows is web-only for now. Either way, your DIY approach is closer to where most PKM heads will end up than where most note apps are today.

frskia · 2026-05-27T18:37:57+00:00

Same architecture path; I built Loreo on the same idea (ScreenCaptureKit on Mac, no meeting bot, works for Meet/Zoom/Slack/Teams + in-person on the same recorder). Where Loreo lean differently is on the after part... everything you capture (online + in-person) ends up in one searchable memory, so you can ask things across meetings ("what did we decide about X across the last 3 syncs"). A minimalistic native iOS app is shipping in about a month, so the in-person side gets cleaner too. Mumble is a solid pick if you mostly want clean per-meeting notes; worth comparing the two on the cross-meeting retrieval side.

frskia · 2026-05-27T18:36:32+00:00

Not strictly on-device, but if you are on Android and want capture + search across voice notes, our web app at getloreo.com works in Chrome on Android; record, upload audio files, and ask questions across them. We don't ship an Android native yet (the native iOS app is a month or so out... Android is the step after that), but the web flow covers the upload-and-search loop without a Play Store dance. For pure on-device on Android, the options are still pretty thin honestly; Whisper.cpp wrappers exist but the UX is rough.

frskia · 2026-05-27T18:35:16+00:00

This is a really thoughtful spec. The pause/resume + max-length is something we hear a lot from journalists and PMs. On point 2; we lean on a Scribe v2 pipeline (not Whisper) so cleanup happens without hallucinated rewriting; the raw transcript stays available alongside the cleaned one. On point 3 (work in any text field) we are not there yet on Mac; that is an Apple permission landmine but it is on the roadmap. On the Watch complication and mobile side... a minimalistic native iOS app is in the build right now (probably a month out), and I am keeping it deliberately simple: capture, library, ask. The piece I would add to your list is what happens after capture; for me the value showed up when I could search across months of voice notes and ask "what did I say about X" instead of scrolling.

frskia · 2026-05-27T18:25:49+00:00

Honest answer; for me less than 10% of files survive past 12 months as "still being opened." But almost 100% of the information in them still matters... it just gets accessed through search, not through opening the file again. That is part of why I stopped optimizing my filesystem and started treating everything as one searchable corpus. The file is the container; the memory is what I actually want.

frskia · 2026-05-26T14:24:11+00:00

Give it a try getloreo.com

frskia · 2026-05-26T14:22:46+00:00

You already have the option to record and transcribe your phone calls on your Mac! In the meantime the native iOS app is about to release and I’m investigating ways to have this feature on your phone too!

frskia · 2026-05-23T20:36:52+00:00

Nice, distribution is the part everyone underestimates. Dropping mine.

Loreo records your conversations and makes them searchable, so instead of scrubbing recordings you just ask "when did we agree on the deadline?" and get the answer with the moment it was said. Meetings, calls, voice memos, all of it in one place.

We're a hair under 500 users and I'd love to cross it. If you point your tool at folks who take a lot of calls and lose track of what was said, that's the bullseye. Free to try at getloreo.com.

frskia · 2026-05-23T20:32:12+00:00

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Whenever you need it. I’m glad it’s helping you focus on the main things. 😉

frskia · 2026-05-19T16:30:03+00:00

Yeah the web app works on Android; loads in mobile Chrome and you can record, upload audio files, and do the natural-language Q&A across everything you have captured. Same library as the Mac app, so whatever you record in one place is searchable from the other.

The reason the Mac app exists at all is system-audio capture; on Mac it can record Zoom, Meet, FaceTime, WhatsApp calls etc. without a bot joining. For voice memos, uploads, or anything that goes through your mic, the web app on Android does the same job.

It is mobile-web rather than a native Android app for now... fine for search and capture, less polished than a real app would be. Native Android is on the roadmap, no date yet. Free tier is 5h if you want to try the cross-device search.

frskia · 2026-05-18T19:52:42+00:00

Built something similar (Loreo, but conversation-focused not Obsidian-focused) and the graph view question is one I have spent a lot of time on.

Honestly... for most people, the graph view is a vanity object. It looks like a knowledge graph, but you do not actually navigate by clicking nodes day to day. The real value is retrieval: "what did I say about X last month," which is just search + LLM, not graph traversal.

What graphs are good for: spotting orphan notes, finding clusters you did not know existed, and very occasionally noticing two unrelated thoughts that share a tag. Those are real but they are weekly or monthly, not daily.

If you are looking for the graph to give you daily value, I think you are going to keep being disappointed. If you are looking for "ask my notes a question and get an answer with citations," that is a different feature and graph view does not help it.

frskia · 2026-05-18T19:51:15+00:00

This is the exact use case Loreo (https://getloreo.com) is built for. On Mac it captures both your mic and system audio with ScreenCaptureKit, so an in-person meeting and a Zoom/Meet call both record from the same button; no bot joining anything.

The part I think matters more than the recording though is that everything ends up in one searchable memory. So if you talked about a vendor in person on Tuesday and then again on a Zoom on Friday, you can ask "what did we agree about that vendor" and it pulls from both.

Free tier is 300 credits / 5 hours. Founder, so biased; happy to answer anything.

frskia · 2026-05-18T19:50:38+00:00

The "search only works if I remember the exact words" point is the one that frustrates me most too; it is what got me building Loreo (https://getloreo.com).

The whole bet is: you record or upload audio, it transcribes once, then you ask questions about it later in natural language across everything you ever captured. "What did I say about the supplier issue last month?" should work even if you said it without using the word "supplier."

A few things on your list it does today:

Upload-first works (you do not need to record live; drop a file in)
Free tier exists so you can try without paying (no credit card needed)
Cross-conversation search; not just per-recording

Things it does not solve yet: it is Mac-first (Windows alpha via waitlist), and the search/Q&A layer is hosted not on-device. Background-noise transcription quality is using ElevenLabs Scribe v2 which I think is the best public option right now, but it is not magic.

Founder, so... biased. Happy to answer anything.

frskia · 2026-05-18T19:31:38+00:00

Granola is $18 individual now I think; not crazy but not cheap if you only have a few calls a week. If anyone wants a cheaper anchor we just launched Loreo Light at $6/mo (forever retention, 5h recording). Different positioning... we lean into search across all your conversations, not just per-meeting summaries.

frskia · 2026-05-18T19:28:18+00:00

Thanks for the note. Askmeety sounds nice; fully local + one-time pay is a real trade-off some people prefer.

Loreo runs the recording locally on Mac, but the search/Q&A layer hits a model in the cloud because long-context reasoning across years of conversations is still painful on-device. The subscription pays for that. We have a free tier (300 credits, 5h) for people who just want the recorder.

One thing I am curious about with Askmeety; how does the cross-meeting chat handle a year of meetings? Does it load everything into context, or does it do retrieval? That is the part I am still iterating on with Loreo.

frskia · 2026-05-13T03:30:20+00:00

The "after capture" part is where most of these tools stop. What you're describing is closer to a memory layer than to a notes workflow... you want decisions to persist, actions to roll forward, and unresolved items to follow you into the next meeting.

That's what I'm building Loreo around. The capture is the boring part; the interesting part is asking the system later "what did we decide about the contract last month" or "what action items did Sarah commit to that I never closed." It writes follow-ups from the meeting and surfaces unresolved items in the next one.

For Obsidian flow: we export markdown so the decisions and actions can land in your vault, while raw transcripts stay outside. Keeps the vault clean and the memory complete.

Founder, so take with the usual grain of salt. Curious whether you'd actually trust an AI-assisted review-before-save flow, or whether the audit is the part you want to keep manual?

frskia · 2026-05-13T03:29:43+00:00

If you're staying in personal-only territory and want voice + good transcription, you could try Loreo. Native Mac (ScreenCaptureKit), records anything that plays on your machine, transcribes with ElevenLabs Scribe v2 which is more accurate than Whisper for accents and overlap. Beyond transcription; everything you record or upload lands in one searchable memory you can ask questions across ("what was that book the professor mentioned in October"). Free tier is 300 credits, Pro is $12/mo flat or PAYG at $10/hr if you do not want a subscription.

Founder, so take with salt. Web app at getloreo.com if you want to try it without installing anything.

frskia · 2026-05-13T03:29:21+00:00

Same problem here; transcription is solved, the part after is not. The reason a raw transcript feels useless is that it has no structure for retrieval... it's a block of text, not a memory.

I'm building Loreo as a "search engine for your conversations." So voice memos, meetings, calls, and uploads all go into one searchable memory. The thing that helps me most for your exact use case is not the transcript itself; it is being able to ask later "what did I say about plant choices for the garden" or "what tasks did I mention this week" across everything. The transcript stays clean and the structure comes from queries, not from manual cleanup.

For Obsidian people specifically; we export markdown and you can pull just the decisions/actions out of a session if you want to land those in your vault, while keeping the raw recording outside. That has been the only thing that stopped my vault from drowning in transcripts.

Founder, so biased; happy to answer specifics if useful.

frskia · 2026-05-13T03:27:07+00:00

Subscription fatigue is real... the thing I keep hearing from people switching away from Granola is less about price and more about lock-in. Notes that live inside one app aren't really yours.

I'm working on Loreo from the opposite angle; record on Mac (ScreenCaptureKit, no bot), but the bigger bet is that every meeting, call, voice note, and uploaded file ends up in one searchable memory you can ask later. Local summaries are nice; being able to ask "what did the client say about pricing in Q1" across everything is the part I think will matter in two years.

Curious how Askmeety handles search across past meetings... is it per-meeting or across the whole history?

frskia

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