I replaced manual meeting notes with these AI tools and ranked the results

Photo by Luke Southern on Unsplash

I’m a good multitasker, except when it comes to meetings. Often, I struggle between paying attention to what’s being said and jotting down my notes.

Even with the pace I have as a writer, I sometimes miss key details or points the other parties spoke about. Or, if I managed to note down almost every conversation in the meeting, I’ll have a tough time summarizing them.

And when you have meetings almost every week, digging through conversations is a pain.

If you’ve been in and out of meetings often, I suppose you could relate. So, I started searching for an AI note taker, especially since some of my colleagues pointed out how these tools have been particularly useful.

AI meeting note takers I’ve tried

I was slightly skeptical about AI-powered note-taking apps. I tried one a couple of years ago, but it complicated my workflow.

Now that AI is more mature, I thought I could find some that need minimal setup and yet produce accurate meeting summaries.

Here are some I’ve tried and tested.

Amie — Best overall

Amie is the best AI meeting note taker amongst all I’ve tried. It lets you generate notes from a live meeting or manually uploaded recordings. Once set up, Amie automatically starts capturing what’s being spoken in a meeting.

Features I love:

• Generates action items from the meeting notes so I can follow up easily.
• Integrates with tools like Notion, HubSpot, and ClickUp. From the AI-generated summaries, I can automatically create a task on ClickUp.
• Its AI chat lets you discover and analyze all stored recordings. Perfect for finding out if you’ve missed any key takeaways.

My Wishlist.

• Support for video capture.
• A clearer progress indicator when processing the recording. (Although it does send a notification email.

tl:dv — Best free option

If you want to get started with an AI meeting note taker for free, try tl:dv. It’s a web-based note taker, although it lets you record meetings with a Mac app. However, unlike Aimee, you must wait for the recording to be uploaded before AI can summarize it.

Features I love:

• It has a broad choice of integrations (but they come under a paid subscription).
• It supports video recording.
• I can automatically generate a report periodically. Useful for keeping track of multiple meetings I attended.

My Wishlist.

• A simpler layout would help. Currently, it feels cluttered.
• Local summarization on my Mac. Opening the browser and navigating to the recording is a hassle.

Granola — Best minimalist transcriber

Granola is another AI-powered note taker worth checking out. It’s minimalist, lets you transcribe calls or meetings, and summarizes notes accurately. However, it doesn’t store the raw recordings, which means you can’t play back the audio to compare notes.

Features I love:

• It’s fully conversational. Want to send meeting notes to team members? Use the AI chat. Need to summarize meetings in the past month? Ask AI.
• Various pre-built templates to choose from for AI summaries.
• Transcribes the meeting in real-time.

My Wishlist.

• I hope it supports manual uploads.
• Support for speaker tagging. Currently, it tries to label the speaker with AI, but might not fare well in larger meetings.

I never had to take notes manually in meetings again

These days, I rely on AI meeting note takers to do my heavy lifting. Because of my workflow, I use Amie as it balances features and simplicity. If you want to get a feel for how convenient AI is without cost, tl;dv is a good choice. Meanwhile, Granola acts more as a transcriber that records whenever you’re on a call.

How do you manage meeting notes? Did you use any of the AI tools I shared?