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Granola

Granola sits in the background during meetings and takes notes. Not a transcript — structured, useful notes in whatever format you actually want. By the time the meeting ends, you have something you can act on.

Mac only. granola.ai

What it does​

Granola listens to your meeting audio (calls and in-person) and combines it with any notes you type during the call. After the meeting it produces structured notes — summary, key points, action items, decisions — in a format you can customise.

It doesn't record video or create full transcripts by default. The output is notes, not a recording. That distinction matters for in-person meetings where people are less comfortable being "recorded."

Why it's better than the built-in options​

Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet all have AI notetaking now. They're fine. Granola is better for three reasons:

It works in every meeting, not just video calls. In-person coffee, phone calls, walking conversations — Granola catches all of it.

The output is customisable. You define the template. If you want every meeting note to have Action Items, Decisions Made, and Follow-up Emails pre-drafted — you set that up once and it runs on every meeting.

It's not attached to a platform. One tool for all your meetings, regardless of where they happen.

Setup​

  1. Download from granola.ai — Mac only
  2. Sign in and grant microphone permissions
  3. Before your first meeting, set up your default template (more on this below)
  4. Click New Meeting when a call starts — or just let it auto-detect

Granola can pull meetings from your Google Calendar or Outlook calendar automatically. When a meeting starts, it appears in the app and you click to start capturing.

Templates​

Templates are the most useful thing to set up properly. A template tells Granola what structure to use for the notes.

To edit your default template: open any note → click the template icon → Edit template

A good default for most business meetings:

## Summary
[2-3 sentence overview of what was discussed and decided]

## Key points
[Bullet points of the main discussion points]

## Decisions made
[What was agreed]

## Action items
- [ ] [Person] — [task] — [deadline if mentioned]

## Follow-up email
[Draft a short follow-up email summarising what was agreed and the next steps]

You can have multiple templates for different meeting types — client calls, internal standups, 1:1s — and switch between them.

During the meeting​

You don't have to do anything during the meeting. Granola runs in the background.

If you want to add context that might not be captured in the audio — a decision, something said on the phone before the call, a follow-up you need to remember — you can type directly into the Granola panel while the meeting is happening. It incorporates those notes into the final output.

After the meeting​

When the meeting ends, Granola processes the audio and produces your notes (usually within a minute or two).

From there you can:

  • Edit the notes directly in Granola
  • Copy specific sections (the follow-up email, the action items)
  • Share the full notes to Notion, Slack, or as a link
  • Ask Granola questions about what was discussed: "What did we agree about the timeline?"
tip

The follow-up email section in your template will save you more time than anything else in Granola. Most people spend 10–15 minutes after calls writing up what was agreed. Granola drafts it before you've closed your laptop.