Migrate Granola notes to local Markdown on Mac

Granola introduced a refreshing innovation to the meeting notetaker landscape: botless meeting capture on macOS. By avoiding the intrusive, awkward recording bots that plague Otter, Fireflies, and Zoom, Granola demonstrated that Mac users value quiet, discreet meeting documentation.

However, as users integrate Granola into their daily workflows, several critical product limitations become painful obstacles:

First, the artificial 30-day history wall. Granola’s free tier locks out access to meetings older than 30 days unless you subscribe to its $14/month Pro plan. For professionals who need to reference client decisions made two months ago or architectural commitments from last quarter, having your own meeting notes held hostage behind an ongoing paywall is unacceptable.

Second, cloud processing and enterprise privacy concerns. While Granola records audio without a visible bot on your screen, it streams that recorded audio to remote third-party cloud servers (such as OpenAI and cloud transcription providers) for processing. For attorneys, doctors, finance directors, executive coaches, and enterprise architects bound by strict confidentiality agreements, cloud audio transmission violates core security policies.

Third, isolated notes disconnected from your knowledge base. Granola is strictly a meeting utility; it is not a knowledge management system. It has no daily notes, no bidirectional [[WikiLinks]], no backlinks panel, no visual knowledge graph, and no spreadsheet table editor. Meeting notes remain stranded in an isolated SaaS silo, completely disconnected from your ongoing project specifications and long-term research.

Migrating your Granola meeting records to sovereign local Markdown (.md) in Oyma eliminates the 30-day paywall, ensures 100% on-device privacy, and unifies your meeting notes with a full-featured personal knowledge vault.

The architectural divergence: cloud SaaS silo vs sovereign knowledge vault

Comparing Granola and Oyma highlights two contrasting approaches to modern meeting intelligence:

1. Granola’s cloud-dependent model

Granola functions as a specialized cloud service:

• Cloud transcription pipeline: Audio captured by the Mac app is uploaded to external cloud servers for speech-to-text processing and LLM summarization.
• Paywalled retention: Your meeting archive is stored in Granola’s cloud database, where access to notes older than 30 days is gated behind a recurring monthly fee.
• Audio discard: Granola does not provide access to the original raw audio files, making it impossible to verify disputed quotes or re-transcribe recordings with alternative models.
• Isolated documents: Meeting notes cannot link to other project files using wikilinks or integrate with external tools like Obsidian.

2. Oyma‘s unified on-device architecture

Oyma merges discreet meeting capture with a sovereign, local-first Markdown vault:

• 100% on-device Whisper transcription: Speech recognition runs directly on your Mac’s Apple Silicon chip. Audio files never leave your computer.
• Unlimited permanent local history: Every meeting note is a standard .md file saved permanently to your Mac disk. There are no history caps, no time limits, and no recurring fees to read your own notes.
• Deep knowledge integration: Meeting notes live alongside your project briefs, daily notes, and research documents. Link attendees and decisions using [[WikiLinks]] and explore connections visually in our Graph View.
• Complete offline independence: With Local-only mode, Oyma operates entirely air-gapped without an internet connection.

Comprehensive transfer matrix: what moves from Granola

Exporting your meeting records from Granola into standard Markdown produces clean, highly usable documents:

Granola Content	Conversion Status	Result in Oyma & Local Storage
Meeting summaries & bullet points	Clean	Preserved as standard CommonMark headers, bold highlights, and bullet lists.
Action item checklists	Clean	Converted directly to interactive - [ ] and - [x] markdown task items.
Speaker dialogue transcripts	Clean	Formatted as chronological transcript sections with speaker and time indicators.
Meeting dates & attendee metadata	Clean	Converted to YAML frontmatter properties and structured markdown headers.
Historical meetings (< 30 days)	Clean	Exported directly from the app to standard local .md text files.
Historical meetings (> 30 days)	Partial	Must be exported before the 30-day cutoff or temporarily unlocked with Pro.
Raw meeting audio files	Unsupported	Granola does not provide raw audio downloads; text summaries survive cleanly.
Proprietary cloud share links	Unsupported	Cloud URLs are replaced by sovereign local files you can share via PDF or Git.

Step-by-step migration playbook: from Granola to Oyma

Follow this simple procedure to migrate your meeting history from Granola into Oyma:

Step 1: Export meeting notes from Granola

Because Granola restricts access to older notes on its free tier, export your meetings promptly:

1. Open the Granola Mac application.
2. Select your first meeting note from the list.
3. Click the Export / Share button in the top right corner.
4. Select Export to Markdown (or Copy Markdown to clipboard).
5. Save the file to a dedicated folder on your Mac (e.g., ~/Documents/Notes/Meetings/).
6. Repeat this process for your active meetings, or use Granola’s bulk export feature in Workspace Settings if available on your plan.

Step 2: Establish your meetings directory structure

Organize your exported meetings inside your vault. We recommend a clean chronological structure:

vault/
├── meetings/
│   ├── 2026/
│   │   ├── 2026-09-15-q3-board-review.md
│   │   ├── 2026-10-02-client-kickoff.md
│   │   └── 2026-10-09-product-design-critique.md
│   └── templates/
│       └── meeting-summary-template.md
├── projects/
│   └── platform-redesign.md
└── daily/
    └── 2026-10-09.md

Step 3: Enhance exported notes with [[WikiLinks]]

Take advantage of Oyma‘s linking capabilities to transform isolated meeting summaries into an interconnected knowledge web:

• Link attendee names to person profiles: facilitator: "[[people/sarah-jenkins]]"
• Link discussed projects to master specs: relatedProject: "[[projects/platform-redesign]]"
• Reference past decisions: supersedes: "[[meetings/2026/2026-09-15-q3-board-review]]"

Step 4: Open your vault in Oyma

1. Launch Oyma on your Mac.
2. Select Open vault (or press ⌘O).
3. Select your directory containing the exported meeting notes.

Oyma instantly mounts your meeting archive:

• Every meeting note opens in our live-preview editor with instant rendering.
• SQLite FTS5 search enables sub-30ms full-text search across all spoken dialogue and action items.
• You can begin recording new meetings without bots directly into your vault via ScreenCaptureKit.

What Oyma adds to your meeting workflow

Switching from Granola to Oyma elevates your meeting experience from a simple audio scratchpad to an integrated intelligence center:

1. True on-device privacy with local Whisper

Granola uploads your conversations to external cloud transcription vendors. Oyma runs on-device Whisper models locally on Apple Silicon. Your sensitive commercial negotiations, legal debriefs, and strategic roadmap debates never leave your computer.

2. Built-in spreadsheet-like tables

Meeting notes often require structured financial matrices, SLA lists, and engineering burndowns. Oyma provides native spreadsheet tables with Tab/Enter navigation, column sorting, and Excel/Numbers paste—saved on disk as standard GFM Markdown.

3. Integrated daily notes and unified knowledge

In Granola, meeting notes exist in isolation. In Oyma, meeting action items append automatically to your daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md log, keeping your daily tasks, scratchpad code, and meeting commitments unified in one seamless workflow.

Permanent freedom for your conversations

Your meetings are where your organization’s most important decisions are born. They should never be trapped in a cloud silo, subject to 30-day expiration timers, or exposed to third-party data collection.

By migrating your Granola meeting records to plain Markdown in Oyma, you secure permanent access to your intellectual property in a private, high-performance Mac environment designed to last.

What transfers from Granola to local Markdown

Migrating from Granola to sovereign Markdown (.md) preserves your core intellectual property while changing how formatting blocks are stored. Here is our empirically tested fidelity matrix:

Step-by-step migration procedure

Follow this sequence to export your Granola library safely and open it in Oyma without data loss:

1. Export your meeting notes library from Granola

   In the Granola Mac application, open each meeting document you wish to archive. Click the Share / Export button in the top right corner and select 'Export to Markdown'. For bulk export, use Granola's workspace export setting to download your full meeting history as a zip archive of Markdown files.

2. Organize exported meeting notes into your local vault

   Extract the exported markdown files into a dedicated `meetings/` directory within your local knowledge vault on macOS. Group notes by date, client, or project based on your preferred organizational schema.

3. Add bi-directional [[WikiLinks]] to connect meetings to project specs

   Unlike Granola, which traps meeting notes in isolated silos, Oyma allows you to connect meeting notes directly to project briefs, attendee profiles, and architectural decisions using standard `[[WikiLinks]]`.

4. Open the folder directly in Oyma

   Launch Oyma, select 'Open vault', and choose your directory. Oyma instantly indexes your meeting notes using local SQLite FTS5, making your entire historical conversation archive instantly searchable offline.

Known conversion gaps and practical workarounds

Every proprietary note system utilizes features that have no 1:1 equivalent in plain Markdown. Here is how to navigate Granola's structural limitations:

• The 30-day history lock: Granola's free tier restricts access to meetings older than 30 days unless paying $14/mo. Ensure you export notes promptly before they hit the access wall.
• Lost raw audio recordings: Granola does not provide downloadable raw audio files for past meetings. In Oyma, audio is captured locally on your Mac and remains under your physical custody.
• Absence of general note-taking: Granola is strictly a meeting notetaker without daily notes, wikilinks, or broad vault organization. Oyma unifies meeting records with your wider knowledge base.

Frequently asked questions

Why do users switch from Granola to Oyma?

While Granola provides botless call capture on Mac, it enforces a strict 30-day history cap on its free tier, charges $14/month for ongoing access, processes audio in the cloud via remote AI APIs, and lacks a comprehensive Markdown note-taking vault. Oyma combines botless recording with 100% on-device Whisper transcription, unlimited local history, and a full-featured Markdown vault with wikilinks and graph view.

How do I export my historical meetings from Granola before they expire?

Open the Granola Mac app, navigate to each meeting, and choose 'Export to Markdown'. If you have dozens of meetings, check Granola's Workspace Settings for a bulk export archive option. We strongly recommend exporting before meetings reach the 30-day free tier cutoff.

Does Oyma upload my meeting audio to the cloud like Granola does?

No. Granola streams audio to cloud transcription servers for processing. In contrast, Oyma runs transcription 100% locally on your Mac's Apple Silicon Neural Engine using on-device Whisper models. Your spoken words never leave your computer.

Can I connect exported Granola notes to other documents in my vault?

Yes. Once exported into Markdown files in Oyma, you can link meeting notes to project specs, client dossiers, and daily notes using standard `[[WikiLinks]]`. Typing `[[` allows you to reference past meeting decisions instantly anywhere in your vault.