Granola Review: The Bot-Free AI Meeting Notes App (Multi-Language Support Explained)

Hey, it’s Hoda.

If your calendar is full of sales calls and client meetings, you know how draining it gets just trying to listen and take notes at the same time.

Granola tackles that problem with an unusual approach: it never lets a bot join your meeting. I’ll leave the detailed setup steps, pricing, and tool comparisons to other articles — here I want to focus on what it actually does, who it’s for, and how well it holds up in languages other than English, since that’s the question I get asked about most. It’s become one of the tools I genuinely couldn’t work without, so I hope this gets that across.

What Is Granola?

Granola is an app that transcribes meetings and conversations with AI and turns them into organized notes. Most meeting-notes tools — Otter, Fireflies, Zoom AI Companion — join your call as a visible “bot” participant. Granola works completely differently: it’s a desktop app you install on your computer, and it never shows up as a participant in the meeting itself.

Behind the scenes, it captures audio directly from your computer’s microphone and system audio (whatever’s coming out of your speakers or headphones), so the other side of the call never sees a “Granola has joined” notification. This invisible design is Granola’s single biggest differentiator.

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I put together a short video recently that covers what Granola is in about 40 seconds (narrated in Japanese, but easy to follow visually even if you don’t speak the language).

How It’s Different From Other Meeting-Notes Tools

Most meeting-notes bots serve a second function just by showing up in the participant list — they signal to everyone else that the meeting is being recorded. Granola deliberately skips that signal, which keeps the meeting feeling natural, but it comes with a real tradeoff: telling the other party they’re being recorded, and getting their consent, is entirely on you.

More on this in the “Things to Keep in Mind” section below.

Core Features

Here’s what Granola actually does:

• Background recording: no bot joins — just have the app running and it captures the conversation. A small indicator on screen shows when it’s recording.
• Transcription + AI summary: transcribes the conversation in real time and generates a cleaned-up set of notes with one click after the meeting ends. If you jot down your own notes (in the scratchpad) during the meeting, the AI weaves them into the fuller context automatically.
• AI chat: ask questions about a meeting, during or after it happens. It’s scoped to answer from that meeting (or your past meetings) specifically — it’s not a general web search feature.
• Memory: the longer you use it, the more your past conversations accumulate, which is genuinely useful for things like “what decisions have we made over the past year?”
• MCP and integrations: syncs with your calendar and proactively suggests recording when a meeting starts. Also works with Slack huddles. On top of Zapier integration, it connects via MCP to AI agents like Claude, so you can have an agent draft follow-up emails or turn meeting notes into tasks automatically.
• Templates: adjust the note structure based on meeting type — sales calls, 1:1s, standups, and so on.
• Sharing and collaboration: teams can split notes across separate spaces and restrict access to specific members.
• Automatic grouping: conversations with the same company or client get grouped together automatically.
• Mobile and desktop coverage: there’s an iOS app and an Android app, so in-person conversations and phone calls can be recorded on the go too, not just desktop meetings.

While it’s running, the Granola app shows something like this:

Getting Started

Granola has a free plan, so you can use it without paying anything to start. Signing up through the link below also gets you a free first month if you later upgrade to a paid plan, as a reader perk from this site.

Head to the official site and click download — it supports both Mac and Windows. After installing, you’ll go through the free sign-up flow.

Multi-Language Support

Granola advertises “multi-language support” as part of even the free plan, and officially states that it can transcribe and generate notes in languages other than English. That said, I couldn’t find much detail in the official docs about accuracy for any specific language — it’s more of a general claim than a per-language breakdown.

For reference, some English-language reviews have reported that transcription accuracy dips a bit under certain conditions — non-native speakers, or a laptop’s built-in mic — compared to bot-based tools like Otter. If you’re planning to use Granola mainly in a language other than English, I’d recommend running a real meeting or two on the free plan first to see how it actually performs for your situation — accented speech, mixed-language meetings, fully non-English conversations, whatever fits your case.

A recent update expanded language support even further

On September 3, 2026, Granola officially announced a significant expansion to its supported language list in Multi-language mode.

Granola just expanded its language support

You still turn it on the same way — Settings > Language > Choose "Multi-language" — but the update reportedly brought accuracy improvements across the board, including for Japanese specifically.

Putting It to the Test

I recently had a roughly two-hour Zoom meeting with a client about Kajabi, so I used it as a real test for Granola. The first thing most people want to know is how it holds up in a language other than English — so here’s a real example. I ran the whole meeting in Japanese, my own language, and the accuracy honestly wasn’t bad at all.

As you can see above, it picked up the Japanese cleanly. It also automatically separated my voice from the other speaker’s. This particular call had three of us on it, and rather than trying to identify all three individually, it grouped things sensibly into “me” and “them” in the dialogue.

The raw transcript is decent on its own, but this is where Granola actually starts to shine.

Hit the “Enhanced” button after the meeting, and the AI analyzes both your own notes and the full transcript to generate a clean set of meeting notes. I show this in the video too, but the moment it happens is smooth enough that it’s honestly a little addictive.

Here’s a rough excerpt of what the AI turned that meeting into:

### Landing Pages vs. Web Pages: Differences and How to Switch

- Web page: standard page with a shared header/footer
- Landing page: a standalone page where the header/footer can be hidden
  - CSS is applied individually per landing page
  - Web page CSS applies globally across all pages
- Only landing pages can be set as the homepage
  - Set a specific landing page as the homepage in Settings
  - Switching between regular web pages isn't possible due to Kajabi's design
- Existing pages can be converted to landing pages via "Add Page to Landing"
- Going forward: build the new page behind the scenes, then switch via internal settings
- **The web page editor is now legacy — new pages should be built as landing pages**

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### Design & Feature Notes

- Two-column layout
  - Was being done with custom code, but the new landing page editor supports it natively
  - Custom code can still be used within columns
  - Column count changes (e.g., 6 columns × 2 rows) are flexible
  - Card height can be equalized with the "Equal Block Height" setting
- Accordion (announcements) feature
  - Current web pages use the legacy editor, so spacing is inconsistent
  - New landing pages support a customizable accordion format
  - Icons, spacing, color, and left/right alignment are all adjustable
- Google Fonts (for non-Latin scripts)
  - Kajabi doesn't natively support non-Latin fonts, but loading Google Fonts externally works
  - Recommended: **Noto Sans** family (industry standard, used by Apple too)
  - Add two lines of CSS — one for landing pages, one for web pages
  - Can mix fonts selectively, e.g. serif for headings only
  - Reference: https://fonts.google.com/?script=Jpan
  - Will share the font implementation guide separately

- Background image sizing
  - Desktop: 2,000px wide recommended, roughly 600–700px tall
  - Mobile: prepare a separate 250–300px image, swap by device
  - Section's "Full Height" setting can match the first viewport

  ### Next Steps

- **Share the font implementation guide**
  - Send over the guide covering how to implement non-Latin web fonts via CSS.
- **Reschedule the Zoom call for after August 20**
  - Prep screenshots and video before discussing phase 2 (offer structure, Kajabi setup).

That’s just a small slice of a two-hour meeting, but the notes it produced from the transcript and context were genuinely accurate. That’s Granola’s real strength.

You can keep asking questions from there

If I ask the AI chat something like “What’s the next meeting?”, “What’s the homework before next time?”, or “What was the client worried about?” based on this note, it answers precisely. You probably won’t forget anything from a 30-minute meeting, but a two-hour one is a different story — Granola keeps track of all of it for you.

You can also ask it to check across every meeting you’ve recorded — something like “list what I need to get done soon” — and it’ll pull from your entire meeting history to answer. If your days are packed with meetings, this feature alone is worth a lot.

Android App Now Available

On July 1, 2026, Granola officially launched its Android app. Android users can now record in-person conversations and meetings using just their phone, without needing to carry a laptop.

It’s simple to use — start a new note from the app, then either jot down a few notes as you go, or lock your phone, set it on the table, and just focus on the conversation. It’s built for situations where opening a laptop isn’t practical: walking 1:1s, coffee shop meetings, whiteboard sessions, and the like.

Desktop and mobile notes also stay in sync. You can check a note you made on your computer while you’re out, or clean up a conversation you recorded on Android later from your desktop — which makes the app useful in a lot more situations than before.

Who It’s a Good Fit For

Granola works especially well if you:

• Have a lot of sales calls or client meetings and want to stay focused while still keeping notes
• Already take your own notes during meetings and want AI to clean them up
• Want to connect it to an AI agent like Claude to automate what happens after the meeting — follow-up emails, task creation, and so on
• Feel uncomfortable with a bot joining meetings, or want to be considerate toward the people you’re talking to

On the other hand, a different tool might suit you better if:

• You want to actually record and keep the meeting video itself
• You need it to run on Linux, or on a work computer that won’t allow desktop app installs
• You want unlimited free usage above all else (some competing tools trade away features in exchange for unlimited free recording)

If you sign up through Hoda’s referral link, you’ll get your first month free when you upgrade from the free plan to a paid one. My honest suggestion: start on the free plan and get a feel for how it performs in meetings conducted in your own language, then switch over through this link once you’re ready to commit.

Now Works on Apple Watch Too

As of a July 2026 update, Granola now works on Apple Watch as well.

You can start a note with one tap from your watch, so Granola is usable even when you don’t have a laptop open — for example:

• In-person meetings
• Coffee shop meetings
• Walking 1:1s
• On-site client conversations

Notes created on Apple Watch automatically sync to the iPhone, Mac, and Windows versions of Granola, so you can review or edit them later from your computer.

Granola used to be mostly built around online meetings, but with Apple Watch support, it’s become a genuinely usable AI notes tool for in-person conversations too.

For a full walkthrough of the Apple Watch app and what it supports, see the dedicated article below.

→ See the full Granola for Apple Watch guide

Pricing

Granola offers a free “Basic” plan along with two paid tiers, “Business” and “Enterprise.” Even the free plan includes the core features — AI notes, AI chat, templates — though how far back you can browse your meeting history is limited. Paid plans unlock unlimited meeting history, integrations with tools like Notion, Slack, and HubSpot, MCP connections, and access to more advanced AI models.

I’ll cover the exact pricing and feature differences between plans in a separate pricing guide.

Wrapping Up

Granola is an AI meeting-notes app built around one core idea — never let a bot join the call — and it’s clearly designed for people who spend a lot of time in sales calls and client meetings. Its real strengths go beyond simple transcription: the way it blends your own notes with the AI transcript, and its MCP integration with AI agents, put it in a different category from a basic transcription tool. That said, it’s worth going in with clear eyes about a couple of things: the responsibility for telling people they’re being recorded sits with you, and there have been occasional reports of a note failing to save properly.

If you’re planning to use it mainly in a language other than English, I’d start with the free plan on a real meeting or two to check the accuracy and overall feel before committing to it fully.