Voice Notes App for Mac: Talk an Hour, Get a Clean Doc
Open Verba, hit record, and just talk. You can ramble for up to an hour, and Verba turns the whole thing into a clean, structured document instead of a wall of raw transcript. It is the voice notes app for Mac that organizes what you said: choose a format, watch it render in Markdown, nest your hashtags into a tidy tree, and lock anything sensitive behind its own password.
Dictate notes up to an hour, structured automatically
Most dictation tools hand you a paragraph blob. Verba is built for long-form thinking: record up to a full hour, then pick the shape you want and let your AI engine do the formatting. The transcription runs on-device (WhisperKit across roughly 99 languages, or NVIDIA Parakeet for 25), so your audio never leaves the Mac in on-device mode, and the cleanup runs on AI you control, never a billed call from us.
- Record up to 60 minutes per note
- On-device transcription, audio stays on your Mac
- Nine output formats so the structure matches your intent
- Markdown rendered inline, not raw text
Nine note formats for whatever you just said
The same spoken brain-dump can become very different documents, so Verba lets you choose. Capture a messy idea and turn it into a clean outline, summarize a long thought, write up a meeting, draft an email, or spin a spoken list into a real to-do list. You speak once; the format decides how it lands on the page.
- Clean note and Brain-dump to outline
- Summary and Meeting notes
- Journal and Email
- Code task, To-do list, and Article outline
Hashtag tags that nest into a Bear-style tree
Say a #hashtag while you talk and Verba files it for you. Tags nest into a Bear-style tree in the sidebar, so #work/clients/acme rolls up cleanly under #work, and you can browse months of voice notes by topic instead of scrolling. It is organization you do by speaking, with zero manual filing afterward.
Lock notes with a password and export anywhere
Some notes are private. Lock any individual note behind its own password, secured with AES-GCM and a per-note key, so a single locked entry stays sealed even on a shared device. When you want your words elsewhere, export to .md or .txt and drop them straight into Obsidian, a repo, an email, or anywhere Markdown lives. Your notes are yours to take.
- Per-note password, AES-GCM with a per-note key
- Export as Markdown (.md) or plain text (.txt)
- Text-only storage option, no audio kept
- Per-device authenticated sync across your Macs
Questions, answered
What is the best voice notes app for Mac?+
Verba is a native macOS menu-bar voice notes app that lets you dictate notes up to an hour and get back a clean, structured document. Transcription runs on-device, and you choose from nine formats like meeting notes, summary, and outline.
How long can a single voice note be in Verba?+
You can record up to a full hour in one Verba voice note. It then transforms the entire recording into a structured document in the format you pick, rather than a raw transcript.
Does Verba keep my audio when I dictate notes?+
No. In on-device mode your audio never leaves the Mac, and Verba can store text only with no audio retained. You can also auto-delete history on a 7, 30, or 90 day schedule.
Can I organize and lock voice notes in Verba?+
Yes. Spoken #hashtags nest into a Bear-style tag tree for browsing by topic, and you can lock any individual note behind its own password using AES-GCM encryption with a per-note key.
Can I export my voice notes out of Verba?+
Yes. Every note exports to Markdown (.md) or plain text (.txt), so you can move it into Obsidian, a code repo, an email, or any other Markdown-friendly tool.