Private session notes for therapists, on your own Mac

Writing up session notes takes time that therapists, counsellors and psychologists would often rather spend with clients. AI note takers promise to help. But most of them upload the recording to a cloud service, and a therapy session is not an ordinary meeting.

This page is for clinicians thinking about whether, and how, to use an AI tool for session notes. It starts with the cautions, because they matter more than the features.

Start with the client, not the tool

Recording a session is a significant step, and in most professional codes it needs the client’s agreement. The American Psychological Association’s ethics code, for example, says that before recording the voices or images of people they provide services to, psychologists “obtain permission from all such persons or their legal representatives” (APA Ethics Code, Standard 4.03).

Whatever your profession and country, a few things hold:

• Ask explicitly, every time it applies. Explain why you want to record, where the recording will be kept, who can hear it and when it will be deleted.
• Make saying no easy. A client should be able to decline, or stop the recording mid-session, without it affecting their care.
• Think about who else is present. Couples, family and group sessions involve more than one person’s consent.
• Some sessions are better not recorded at all. That is a clinical judgement, and no software should make it for you.

Follow the rules of your own professional body, licensing board and employer on recording and on clinical notes. The points on this page are general and are not legal or clinical advice.

Health data has its own rules

What is said in therapy is usually health information, and many jurisdictions give it extra protection. In the EU and EEA, including Iceland, data concerning health is a special category of personal data under Article 9 of the GDPR, with stricter conditions for processing it. Other countries have their own health-privacy laws.

Check the health-data rules where you practise before recording any session: who counts as responsible for the data, how long records must or may be kept, and whether you may use a given tool at all.

Why local processing matters here

Most AI note takers work in the cloud: the audio is uploaded, transcribed on the vendor’s servers and summarised there. For a therapy session, that means the most sensitive thing your client has said is held by a company neither of you has a relationship with.

Hearkeeper, a Mac app that is not released yet, is built to do the work on your own computer instead:

• Recording on the Mac. It records your microphone and your computer’s audio directly, whether the session is in your room or on Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex or FaceTime. No bot joins the call.
• Transcription on the Mac. Speech becomes text on your Mac with whisper.cpp, accelerated by Metal. After the session, a final pass with Whisper large-v3 turbo produces the transcript and separates the speakers.
• Notes from a local model. A language model on your Mac drafts a summary and to-dos, with no API key. Every line points to the second it was said, so you can check it against the recording.
• Nothing uploaded by default. Nothing leaves your Mac unless you connect a team server or your own API key. With neither connected, everything stays on your disk and works offline.
• Your own files. Audio and notes are files on your disk, search is one SQLite file, and notes export to Markdown.

Local processing reduces who can reach the data. It does not make the data less sensitive. Your Mac still needs a strong password, disk encryption and a backup plan you are comfortable with, and the recordings should be deleted when you no longer need them.

The consent step, built in

Hearkeeper starts every recording with a consent step: you read a short notice aloud, post it in the chat of an online session, or both. A consent receipt is saved with the recording. A recording pill stays on screen the whole time, shows in screen shares and cannot be hidden.

That step supports the conversation you have with your client; it does not replace it. For a therapy session, the real consent conversation should happen before you press record, and ideally be documented in the way your profession expects. The guide on recording meetings with consent covers the legal side of recording in more detail.

What Hearkeeper is not

Please read this part carefully.

• It is not a clinical record system. It does not replace your electronic health record, your practice management software or the notes your profession requires you to keep. Treat what it produces as a draft to review, not as the record.
• It has no compliance certification of any kind. We do not claim that Hearkeeper on its own meets any health-data law or standard. Whether you may use it, and how, depends on your jurisdiction, your employer and your professional body.
• It is not a clinical tool. It does not assess, diagnose or suggest treatment. The summary is written by a small local language model, and it can be wrong. Check it against the recording.
• It is not for recording without consent. There is no hidden mode, by design.

Where it may help

With those limits in mind, some clinicians may find a local note taker useful for:

• Drafting notes after a session the client has agreed to record, then writing the clinical record yourself.
• Supervision and training, where a trainee and client have both agreed to a recording being reviewed.
• Non-clinical meetings, such as case conferences, team meetings or supervision groups.

Transcription covers 99 languages, with Icelandic first-class and mixed Icelandic and English detected automatically.

When is it available?

Hearkeeper is coming to the Mac first (macOS 14.2 or later, Apple silicon and Intel), with other platforms later. It is made in Reykjavík by Drangalia ehf.

If you want notes that stay on your own computer, join the waitlist and we will email you when there is a build for you.