Support

Getting started

1. Download Pinna, open the disk image and drag Pinna to your Applications folder.
2. Open Pinna. It lives in the menu bar, not the Dock. A short welcome tour opens the first time.
3. Allow the microphone and System Audio Recording when the tour asks (see Permissions).
4. Choose what happens when a call starts: Record, Ask first, or Do nothing.
5. On Apple silicon, let the tour download built-in Whisper if you want transcripts on this Mac, then click Done.

Pinna needs macOS 26 or later. It runs on Apple silicon and Intel Macs; built-in Whisper and Parakeet need Apple silicon. On Intel, Pinna uses Apple on-device speech, or a cloud engine with your own key. Notes from Apple Intelligence also need Apple silicon; on Intel, notes come from a local model server such as Ollama, or a cloud model with your key.

Permissions

Pinna asks for two permissions, and one that is optional:

• Microphone, for your side of the call.
• System Audio Recording, for the other side: the sound your call app plays. Pinna records audio only, never your screen.
• Notifications (optional), so Pinna can tell you when a recording starts or needs you.

If you said no by accident, open System Settings, then Privacy & Security. Turn Pinna on under Microphone, and under Screen & System Audio Recording in the System Audio Recording Only list. macOS may ask you to quit and reopen Pinna; the welcome tour has a Quit & Reopen button for this.

Recording calls

Pinna notices when a call app opens your microphone: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet in any browser, FaceTime and iPhone calls, WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, Webex and more. You can edit the list in Settings, Auto-record.

• Start when others speak. Pinna waits for the other side, shows "Waiting for others" with Record Now, and keeps the meeting from just before they spoke.
• Ask when the call goes quiet. After a quiet stretch (2, 5 or 10 minutes, or off), the pill asks "Still in a meeting?" and stops if nobody answers. Pinna also stops when the call app quits.
• Nobody joined. The files go to the Trash and the pill offers Undo.

You can always start a recording yourself from the menu. Every recording is saved as three files: you, them and the mix.

Connecting agents

Agent access is part of Pro (and the trial).

1. Open Settings, Agents. Agent access is on by default during the trial and with Pro.
2. Under Connect an agent, find your app (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Codex, ChatGPT desktop, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Zed, LM Studio, Gemini CLI, Hermes, Goose or Raycast) and follow its one step. Pinna adds itself under the name "pinna".
3. Click Test to check the connection.

Then ask your agent something like "What did I promise Veldkamp last week?". The Activity list in Settings, Agents shows everything agents read. To keep a meeting or an app out of reach, hide it there. Agents can start or stop a recording only if you turn that on.

Any other agent can read the plain files in your recordings folder: AGENTS.md at the top explains where everything is.

Finding meetings again

• Search from the menu, or open the Library and search across titles, notes and transcripts.
• Click a time next to a note or a transcript line to play from that second.
• Every meeting is a folder in ~/Documents/Pinna by default, with meeting.md, the transcript, the notes and the audio. Change the folder in Settings.
• Import a recording you made elsewhere from the Library.

Models and cloud engines

Settings, Transcription & AI is where you choose who makes transcripts and notes. Automatic uses built-in Whisper once its model is downloaded. Until then it uses Whisper through mlx_whisper if you installed that yourself, and otherwise Apple on-device speech. On an Intel Mac, Automatic always uses Apple on-device speech.

• Speech models: download Whisper builds or NVIDIA Parakeet. Each model shows a badge for how well it fits your Mac (such as Runs great or Needs more disk space), its quality in Dutch and English, and how long an hour-long meeting takes. Pause a download, choose Test Speed on This Mac to measure it on a short clip, or delete a model to free the space.
• Language: with Detect automatically, Whisper, Parakeet and the cloud engines detect the spoken language. Apple on-device speech cannot: it uses the language you pick, or else the language of your last transcript (your Mac's language the first time).
• Notes with Ollama: while Ollama runs, Download a model for Ollama lists notes models to download through Ollama, use and delete.
• Cloud: cloud engines and models need your own key, which Pinna keeps in your Keychain. Before one gets anything, Pinna shows what is sent, to which company, where it is processed, how long they keep it and whether they train on it, and asks for your OK. It asks each company once for each kind of data: the audio for transcripts, the transcript text for notes. Picking one from the Library asks the same way.

License and restore

Every install starts with a 7-day Pro trial. After it, Pinna keeps working as Free, and everything you made stays.

• Activate: open the License window from the menu, paste the key from your purchase e-mail and click Activate.
• Lost your key: find it in the customer portal with the e-mail address you bought with.
• New Mac: choose Deactivate in the License window on the old Mac, or free it in the customer portal, then enter the key on the new one.
• Offline: Pinna checks the key about once a day and keeps Pro working offline for up to 30 days.
• Refunds: e-mail us with the address you bought with. See the terms.

Contact

E-mail support@getpinna.app. Tell us your Pinna version (Settings, About) and your Mac's macOS version, and what you expected to happen. Please do not send recordings or transcripts unless we ask; if we do, remove anything private first.