Google launches Mac app to rival AI note-taker Granola

Google has released a new Mac app called Google AI Edge Foresight, a competitor to the popular AI note-taker Granola and others, built by the same team that released an AI-powered dictation tool working with local models earlier in April.

The app can work completely offline, using the on-device EmbeddingGemma 2 model, which has 740 million parameters, to capture meeting notes across apps, including notes from in-person meetings. Like Granola, it uses a split-screen view, letting users write shorthand notes on one side while AI-generated notes appear on the other, and it lets users take manual notes while it transcribes a meeting. Unlike Granola, Google’s app also lets users view the meeting transcript or chat with a Gemma 4-powered assistant to get answers.

Users can also upload documents — PDFs, Google Docs, Microsoft Office files, plain text, Markdown, and web bookmarks — to build a knowledge base, and the app can answer questions in real time using meeting notes and those documents. Google’s FAQ page says the app is optimized for Apple Silicon and can work completely offline, so people can use it while traveling or without an internet connection.

Google’s earlier dictation app was experimental and never reached mainstream use, and its new meeting note-taker could simply be a way to showcase its offline Gemma model family rather than a bid for market share. Still, Google could very well release a consumer version of a meeting note-taker that works across video-calling apps through its Gemini apps, relying on cloud models instead.

The meeting note-taker space is already crowded. In the last few months, dictation company Wispr and scheduling company Calendly each released their own note-takers, and productivity startup Superhuman — formerly known as Grammarly — acquired YC-backed note-taker Fathom last month.

Why it matters

Google appears to be using a niche Mac app to test how far its offline Gemma models can go, a dry run that could inform a broader on-device note-taking feature inside its mainstream Gemini apps.