FAQ
How Heliotype records, what leaves your Mac, and what it costs. Nothing here that isn’t true of the shipping app.
Yes — for v1.0. The build is signed with a self-signed certificate, not yet Developer-ID notarized, so macOS 15 (Sequoia) blocks the first open. Approving it is a one-time step:
On macOS 14 and earlier, right-click the app and choose Open instead. Developer-ID notarization is on the roadmap; it removes this step entirely and makes first launch a plain double-click.
Today, transcription runs on AssemblyAI. That is what produces accurate, speaker-labeled text — under your own API key, at their rates, with no markup from us. Only the extracted mono audio track is ever sent, and only at the moment you ask for a transcript. Never the video, never the picture, never during recording.
A fully local, on-device engine is the number-one item on the roadmap. The engine layer is swappable by design, so a local option can drop in without changing anything else about the app. If cloud is a dealbreaker for you today, that is the release to wait for — and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.
Because of how it records. Capturing system audio without a bot in the call — and without recording your screen — uses a CoreAudio process tap, and that API is incompatible with the App Store sandbox. App Store distribution would mean a bot, a screen-recording indicator, or no meeting capture at all.
So Heliotype ships as a signed DMG you download directly. That also means no store gatekeeping, a real 14-day trial, and updates on our schedule.
No. Heliotype records the Mac’s own audio locally — system audio through an audio-only process tap, plus your microphone. Nothing joins the participant list, nothing is announced, and nothing on the meeting platform can see Heliotype. The meeting is unchanged for everyone else on the call.
Heliotype transcribes under your own AssemblyAI key, billed by AssemblyAI at their rates — roughly $0.15–$0.27 per hour of audio, speaker labels included. Heliotype adds no markup and has no meter of its own.
A new AssemblyAI account includes about $50 of free credit — on the order of 185 hours of audio — with no card required. In the app, open the menu-bar icon, choose Set AssemblyAI API Key…, and click Get a Free Key. Paste the key and save; it is stored in your macOS login Keychain, never in plain text on disk.
Two: Microphone and System Audio Recording Only. macOS asks for both the first time you start a recording. System Audio Recording Only is the audio-only category under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording — it is not full screen recording. Nothing on your screen is captured, so no purple screen-recording indicator turns on.
For calendar naming, macOS asks for Calendar permission just in time — the first time a recording is named, never at launch. The calendar is read locally through EventKit. Decline it and recordings fall back to a clean timestamp.
No — by design. Heliotype does not summarize, extract action items, or interpret your meeting. You already have Claude or ChatGPT, and they are better at that than any built-in template. Heliotype’s job is to hand your model clean, named, speaker-labeled text and get out of the way. Drag the transcript into your AI and ask “what did I commit to?”
An Apple Silicon Mac. Meeting recording needs macOS 15 or newer — it relies on the modern CoreAudio process-tap API. Transcribing existing audio or video, via Finder right-click or the menu-bar picker, works on macOS 13 or newer. Heliotype is a direct-download signed DMG, about 16 MB.
Heliotype is a one-time license: $29 at launch, $39 list. Every download starts a 14-day full trial — the complete app, not a limited mode. Purchases go through Lemon Squeezy, the merchant of record, which handles EU VAT and US sales tax. No subscription, no meters, no renewal.
They stay on your Mac. Meeting recordings are saved as PROJECT-Title-YYYYMMDD-HHMM.m4a in a folder you choose — ~/Movies/Heliotype by default — with the speaker-labeled transcript beside each one as plain text. Transcripts of right-clicked items land next to their source. Nothing is stored in a cloud of ours; there isn’t one.
No. Heliotype records the meeting and transcribes when it stops — there are no live captions during the call. When you end a recording, transcription starts on its own, the menu-bar dropdown shows progress, and the finished text lands beside the recording.
No. Heliotype is single-user and local: no accounts, no shared workspace, no cloud dashboard, no SSO. One app, one Mac, your recordings on your own disk. If your team wants it, each person runs their own copy with their own key.
Laws vary. Some places require the consent of one party (you); others require everyone’s consent, and the rules differ by country and by US state. The safe practice is also the simplest: tell people you are recording and get their okay. This is not legal advice — if you record client calls regularly, check the rules where you and your participants are.
Start with the 14-day trial — it is the whole app, so you will know before paying. If something is wrong after purchase, write to hello@heliotype.app and we will sort it out. Questions this page doesn’t answer go to the same address.
The hello@heliotype.app inbox is read by the person who built the app. For privacy specifics, see the privacy page.