Why Granola is Mac-only
If you've heard about Granola from a colleague and then visited their website on a Windows machine, you already know the frustration: there is no download button for you. Despite raising a reported $125 million in a Series C round in 2025, Granola has not shipped a Windows client, and the company has been explicit that it is not on their near-term roadmap.
This isn't just a resourcing decision. There's a genuine architectural reason behind it. Granola's core appeal — capturing meeting audio without sending a bot into your call — depends on intercepting system audio at the operating system level. On macOS, this is possible via Core Audio, Apple's low-level audio framework that allows an app to tap into the system's audio mix. It's a well-documented, stable API that has been available for years.
Windows does not have a direct equivalent. WASAPI (Windows Audio Session API) can capture what's playing through the speakers via its loopback mode, but the programming model is fundamentally different. Where macOS treats system audio as a resource any permissioned app can observe, WASAPI loopback requires handling exclusive vs. shared mode audio sessions, dealing with per-application audio isolation, and navigating a security model that has changed significantly across Windows 10 and Windows 11. Building reliable system audio capture on Windows that works across NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and integrated audio hardware — across all the driver variation that Windows entails — is a substantial engineering investment.
Granola's engineering team, while well-funded, is small relative to its valuation. They've chosen to do one thing well on the platform where the architecture is most cooperative. The result: if you're on Windows and you've heard Granola is the tool to beat, you're looking at a gap that may not close for a long time.
What makes Granola special
Before recommending an alternative, it's worth being honest about what Granola actually does well. The enthusiasm around it is real.
The core experience is designed around three things. First, no meeting bots: when you use Granola, nobody else on the call sees a bot appear in the participant list. Granola sits quietly on your Mac and listens via system audio, invisible to everyone else. For sales calls, client meetings, or any context where a bot would change the dynamic, this matters.
Second, collaborative note-taking: Granola's UI positions your own notes alongside the AI-generated transcript. You jot down what matters to you; Granola fills in the detail you missed. It doesn't try to replace your notes — it augments them. That workflow feels more natural than tools that generate a wall of AI text you have to sift through.
Third, design quality: Granola looks and feels like a consumer product. The onboarding is clean, the interface is refined, and it works with the calendar integrations most Mac users already rely on.
One important nuance that many users miss: Granola is not a local-processing tool. Despite capturing audio locally (without a bot), the audio is sent to cloud transcription services for processing. That means your meeting audio does leave your machine. For most users this is fine, but for anyone in a regulated industry, handling confidential client conversations, or simply preferring that sensitive discussions never hit a third-party server, this is a meaningful distinction.
The best Windows alternative: Clearminutes
Clearminutes is a desktop meeting assistant built specifically to provide the same bot-free experience that makes Granola compelling — and it works on Windows 10 and above, as well as macOS and Linux.
On Windows, Clearminutes uses WASAPI loopback to capture system audio directly, in the same way Granola uses Core Audio on Mac. There is no bot, no virtual camera, and no account required on your call platform. From the perspective of everyone else on the call, you are just a regular participant. Clearminutes runs silently in the background, capturing and transcribing in real time.
The transcription itself is handled by Whisper.cpp running locally on your machine. This is the key architectural difference from Granola: the audio is processed entirely on your CPU or GPU and never sent to a cloud server. Clearminutes is local by design, not local by marketing — the Whisper model runs in-process, and there is no network path for audio to travel.
After a meeting ends, Clearminutes generates an AI summary using a local language model (a built-in Gemma model by default) or your own API keys for Claude, OpenAI, Groq, or OpenRouter. The summary, action items, and full transcript stay in a local SQLite database on your machine.
The free tier gives you full meeting history with transcription and AI summaries — enough to evaluate whether it fits your workflow. The Pro plan costs £12 per month (or £144/year) and unlocks speaker diarization, audio file import, TickTick sync, and Outline integration.
Clearminutes is bootstrapped and built by DevBytesUK, a small UK-based software studio. It's not a VC-funded rocketship, but it's actively maintained and ships updates regularly.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Clearminutes | Granola |
|---|---|---|
| Windows support | Yes | No |
| macOS support | Yes | Yes |
| Linux support | Yes | No |
| Meeting bots | None | None |
| Local transcription (audio stays on device) | Yes — Whisper.cpp | No — cloud API |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes (limited) |
| Speaker diarization | Yes (Pro) | Yes |
| AI summaries | Yes (local or BYO keys) | Yes (cloud) |
| BYO API keys | Yes | No |
| Integrations | TickTick, PDF, Outline | Notion, Slack, HubSpot |
| Audio file import | Yes (Pro) | Not available |
| Built-in local LLM | Yes (Gemma) | No |
| Funding model | Bootstrapped | $125M VC-funded |
| Pro price | £12/mo | £14–35/mo |
How to get started on Windows
Getting Clearminutes running on Windows takes under five minutes. Head to clearminutes.app and download the .exe installer for Windows. Run the installer and follow the prompts — no special configuration is needed during setup.
When you launch Clearminutes for the first time, the onboarding flow will walk you through two things: selecting your microphone input, and downloading the Whisper model. The model download is a one-time step of around 300–1500MB depending on the size you choose. A smaller model like base downloads quickly and works well for most calls; the larger models offer better accuracy for technical vocabulary or accented speech.
Once setup is complete, grant Clearminutes microphone permission when prompted by Windows. For system audio capture, Clearminutes uses WASAPI loopback — no virtual audio device (like VB-Cable) is required. Simply start a meeting in Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, or any other platform, then press Record in Clearminutes. The transcription begins immediately.
Your meetings are free to transcribe and summarise, with no credit card required. If you find it useful, upgrading to Pro unlocks speaker identification and advanced integrations for £12/month.
Conclusion
Granola for Windows does not exist and, based on the company's public statements, may not for the foreseeable future. The architectural challenges of replicating Core Audio's system audio capture across Windows' fragmented driver ecosystem are real — it's not simply a matter of porting the UI.
Clearminutes fills that gap directly. It delivers the same core promise — bot-free, system-audio capture that works alongside any call platform — on Windows 10 and above, today. And because Whisper.cpp runs locally, it goes further than Granola on privacy: your audio never leaves your machine, not even to a cloud transcription API. For Windows users who want the Granola experience, Clearminutes is the closest thing available.