Step 1
Listens to your Mac's audio
Captures sound from any app: Zoom, Meet, Teams or a video in the browser, and your microphone if you turn it on. No bot joining the call.
Mara AI for macOS
Meetings, without barriers.
Real-time translated captions, right on your Mac. Understand every word while it is still being spoken.
How it works
Three steps, all happening while the other person speaks.
Step 2
Transcribes on your Mac
Apple's speech recognition runs locally. The meeting audio is never sent to any server.
Step 3
Translates as people speak
The translated caption takes shape in real time and is refined at the end of each sentence.
Built for developers
From the English stand-up with the team abroad to the summary when the call ends: Mara follows the meeting from start to finish.
Available
Meetings in other languages
Live captions in a discreet window over the call, forming word by word as people talk.
- Instant translation on your Mac
- Optional GPT refinement
- Free and offline in Mac-only mode
Available
AI summaries
When the call ends, GPT reads the transcript and sums up what was talked about, with your own OpenAI key.
- Tells a conversation from a talk
- Overview and the topics discussed
- Saved as a file on your Mac
New
Captions read aloud
Mara reads each translated caption aloud with a voice that runs on your Mac, so you can listen instead of reading.
- Neural voices on your Mac
- Follows each speaker's voice
- Free, offline after one download
Incremental translation
The caption doesn't wait for the sentence to end.
Most tools only translate once the person stops talking. Mara shows the translation taking shape, word by word, and swaps in the final version when the sentence ends.
- Draft
- Shown in lavender while the speech is happening.
- Final
- Turns white, already reviewed with the context of the conversation.
AI summary
The meeting ends, the summary is ready.
With your own OpenAI key, Mara reads the transcript and tells you what was talked about: the topics, what each side brought up and what was decided.
- Knows what kind of talk it was
- A meeting between several people or someone speaking alone, like a class or a talk: the summary adapts to what happened.
- What was talked about
- A short overview and the topics that came up, each with what was said and decided. With the microphone on, it also knows what you said and took on.
- Yours, on your Mac
- The summary is saved as a file in Documents and copied in one click. The transcript only goes to OpenAI when you ask.
Read aloud
Listen instead of reading.
If you'd rather not keep your eyes on the captions, Mara reads each translated sentence aloud with a neural voice that runs on your Mac: free, and with no internet after a one-time download. It starts off; you turn it on.
- The voice follows the speaker
- A deep voice is read with a male voice, a high one with a female voice, judged from the pitch on your Mac. With Identify who's speaking on, each person in the meeting gets a voice of their own. You pick the voices for each language, plus the speed and volume.
- Keeps up with the meeting
- Mara starts reading while the sentence is still being said, a few words at a time as they settle. It never cuts a piece off, skips the ones that went stale and speeds up a little when it falls behind.
- Never in your captions
- With speakers, your microphone pauses while Mara speaks, so her voice isn't transcribed as yours; with headphones it doesn't need to.
- One shortcut away
- ⌃⌥V turns it on and off, and so does the speaker button in the captions window. The voices are in Settings › Translation.
Your audio stays on your Mac.
Mara was designed to work locally. The cloud is optional, and you see exactly how much you use.
Local transcription
Done by Apple's speech recognition, on the device. Your microphone stays off until you turn it on.
Local translation and voice
Apple's translator produces the caption without using the internet, and the voice that reads it aloud runs on your Mac too.
Optional GPT
When on, only the transcribed text is sent. When off, nothing leaves your Mac.
Key in the Keychain
Your OpenAI key lives in the macOS vault, never in a file.
Your files
Transcripts and summaries are saved as files on your Mac.
Measured usage
Tokens and estimated cost of every call, per session, day and month.
Frequently asked questions
Do the other participants know I'm using Mara?+
Mara doesn't join the call: it listens to the audio already coming out of your Mac. Letting participants know and following your company's rules on meeting transcription is up to the person using it.
Does Mara hear me too?+
Only if you want. The microphone is off by default; turn it on in the captions window, with ⌃⌥M or in Settings, and what you say goes into the transcript labeled as yours, so the summary knows who said what. Mara can't tell whether you are muted in the call, so you decide when it listens. Without headphones, it recognizes and drops the echo of the others coming out of the speakers.
Do I need an OpenAI key?+
No. Apple's local translation works without a key and at no cost, and so does reading the captions aloud. The key is only needed for the AI summary and, if you want it, GPT refinement of each sentence.
Which languages are supported?+
Meetings in English, Spanish or Portuguese, with captions in any of the three: Mara translates between them on your Mac. When the meeting is already in the caption language, it transcribes without translating. You pick both languages before you start. The app's own interface follows your Mac: English, Spanish or Portuguese.
How does the summary work?+
When the meeting ends you ask for the summary. The transcript goes to OpenAI with your key, and GPT works out whether it was a conversation between several people or a talk, then tells you what was said: an overview, the topics and the decisions. Nothing is sent unless you ask.
Can Mara read the captions aloud?+
Yes, when you turn it on with ⌃⌥V, the speaker button in the captions window or Settings › Translation. It reads the captions while Mara is translating, that is, when the meeting is in a different language from the captions. The voices are neural and run on your Mac: Kokoro-82M reads English and Spanish, and Supertonic 3 reads Portuguese. The first time, Mara itself downloads them from Hugging Face (about 333 MB for English and Spanish, 400 MB for Portuguese); after that, it works with no internet and nothing is sent anywhere.
Is Mara open source?+
Yes, under the MIT license. The app is written in Swift and SwiftUI, with no server of its own: calls go straight from your Mac to OpenAI, with your own key. Contributions are welcome.
Which computers does it run on?+
Macs running macOS 26 or later. The first time, macOS asks for permission to record system audio.
How much does GPT cost?+
OpenAI bills your own key, and it usually comes to a few cents of a dollar per hour of meetings. Mara shows usage in real time in the settings.
- Native Swift
- Made for macOS
- Open source, MIT
- Pull requests on GitHub
Contribute
Mara is open source, under the MIT license. Read it, audit it, adapt it to your workflow, open an issue or send a pull request.
Start today.
Open Mara, pick the language and join the meeting.