Frequently Asked Questions

Parrot Scribe is a professional-grade local transcription tool for macOS. It uses WhisperKit and Apple Neural Engine acceleration to deliver 100 percent on-device processing.

Yes. Privacy is a core design principle. Audio stays on your Mac, transcription happens locally, and MCP access, a Pro feature, is disabled by default.

Parrot Scribe is free for personal use, with unlimited on-device transcription. Pro adds more with a $39 annual plan or a $119 one-time lifetime option, and includes MCP server access for AI tools. Existing licenses already include Pro.

Parrot Scribe requires an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) running macOS 15 Sequoia or newer. Intel Macs are not supported. Transcription works offline once the app and model are on your Mac.

Unlike cloud-based tools such as Otter and Fireflies, Parrot Scribe keeps transcription on your Mac and does not join meetings with a bot. It is built for live meetings, not as an audio-file product: you can import a recording later, but MacWhisper is better if you need to upload or import audio files, subtitles, or a CLI pipeline. Granola is for shared cloud-polished notes. Whisper Notes is for a notes workflow. Choose Parrot Scribe when the job is live meeting memory on your Mac. Compared with other local tools, it offers a native macOS 15 experience, LLM-friendly TOON output, and MCP integration for AI tools, included with Pro.

The MCP (Model Context Protocol) server is built into Parrot Scribe and included with Pro. It lets tools like Claude Desktop and Cursor access your transcripts - both real-time and historical. It uses a Unix domain socket with a signed stdio shim for secure communication, features 3-tier permissions, and is disabled by default for zero attack surface when not in use.

Your license moves with you: deactivate it on your old Mac and activate it on the new one. Copy your Parrot Scribe library to the new Mac; iCloud Keychain carries its software encryption root so the copied data opens there, or use your free 24-word recovery key without iCloud.

Remove Speaker removes the person from your speaker list and deletes their name and voice profile. The old identity will no longer be recognized, while existing sessions and their transcripts remain. If the person appears in a later session, you can add them again as a new speaker. Forget Speaker permanently deletes their name and voice profile and every session where they appeared, including all other speakers’ text in those sessions. It cannot be undone.