Ghosty Notes

What you need

A Mac with Apple Silicon. M1, M2, M3, M4 or later.

This is a hard requirement, not a preference. Transcription runs on your Mac using Apple’s own machine learning hardware, and that hardware does not exist on Intel Macs. There is no cloud fallback we can silently switch you to, because the whole point is that your audio never leaves the device.

To check: Apple menu, About This Mac. If the Chip line says Apple M-anything, you are fine. If it says Intel, this app will not work on that machine.

You also need roughly 1 GB of free disk space for the app plus the transcription model.

Download and open

  1. Download the disk image from ghostynotes.app.
  2. Open the downloaded .dmg file.
  3. Drag Ghosty Notes onto the Applications folder shortcut in the window.
  4. Eject the disk image.
  5. Open Ghosty Notes from Applications.

If macOS blocks the first launch

macOS checks new apps the first time you open them. If you see a message about the app being from an unidentified developer, or it simply refuses to open:

  1. Open System Settings, Privacy & Security.
  2. Scroll to the bottom. There will be a line naming Ghosty Notes with an Open Anyway button.
  3. Select it, then confirm.

You only do this once.

What happens on first launch

Ghosty Notes walks you through setup:

  1. Welcome
  2. Permissions - microphone and system audio. See permissions.
  3. Sign in - optional. You only need an account for Pro features.
  4. Calendar - optional. See calendar.
  5. Done

While you go through those screens, the app quietly downloads its transcription model in the background. It is about 600 MB. On a slow connection your very first recording may be transcribed a little later than usual, which is normal.

Do I need an account?

No. Recording, transcription, notes, export and the MCP server all work with no account at all.

You need an account only for Pro: Google and Outlook calendar connections, and speaker identification.

Updating

The app updates itself. When an update lands, it installs on next launch.

One thing to know: your coding agent’s MCP config contains the app version in a file path, so an update can break that link. If MCP stops working right after an update, the one-line fix is in troubleshooting.

Uninstalling

Drag Ghosty Notes from Applications to the Trash.

That does not delete your notes, on purpose. They live in a separate folder:

~/Library/Application Support/ghosty-notes

Delete that folder too if you want the notes gone. There is no undo and no copy anywhere else.