In short
It should mean your notes are encrypted on your own device before they leave, with a key only your devices hold, so the provider stores data it cannot read. Ask where encryption happens, who holds the key, what stays readable, and what happens when a feature needs the plain text.
End-to-end encrypted meeting notes should mean one thing: your notes are encrypted on your own device before they go anywhere, with a key that only your devices hold, so the company storing them has data it cannot read. Anything short of that — "encrypted at rest", "bank-grade encryption", "secure cloud" — describes how the provider protects your data from other people, not from itself.
The phrase is used loosely, so this guide gives the questions that separate the two, what stays visible even when the content does not, where AI features fit, and then Notey's own answer, exactly.
Three kinds of "encrypted"
| What the vendor says | Who can read your notes | What it protects against |
|---|---|---|
| Encrypted in transit (TLS) | The provider, once it arrives | Someone on the network between you and them |
| Encrypted at rest | The provider, which holds the keys | A stolen disk or a leaked storage bucket |
| End-to-end, keys on your devices | Only your devices | The above, plus the provider, its staff, and anyone who compels or breaches it |
Most services do the first two, and they should. Only the third changes who can read your meeting notes. It also changes what the provider can do for you: it cannot search your notes on a server, reset your key, or restore your data if you lose the key.
Questions to ask about end-to-end encrypted meeting notes
Where does encryption happen?
On your device, before upload, or on their server after it arrives? If the server encrypts it, the server saw it first. Look for a plain statement that data is encrypted on the device.
Who holds the key?
If the vendor can reset your password and give you your notes back, it holds a key or a way to one. That is a legitimate design, and many people want it, but it is not end-to-end. A vendor that truly does not hold the key will tell you that losing it loses your data.
What is left in the clear?
Content can be encrypted while other things are not. Ask for the list. It commonly includes:
- your account email address and subscription status;
- how much you store, and how many items;
- when your devices connect, and from where;
- usage records for billing.
None of this is your notes, but it is information about you, and a precise vendor will say which of it they keep.
What happens when a feature needs the plain text?
Search across devices, AI summaries, sharing links and transcription on a server all need unencrypted text or audio somewhere. Ask which features do, where that text goes, who processes it, and whether it is kept or used for training. A tool can have end-to-end encrypted sync and still send text to an AI service when you ask for a summary; what matters is that it says so. Where does your meeting audio go? has the full checklist for those flows, and does your AI notetaker train on your meetings? covers the training question.
What about the audio?
For a meeting tool, the recording is the most sensitive thing it holds. Ask whether audio is uploaded at all, whether it is covered by the same encryption as the notes, and whether it is uploaded to be transcribed. Many notetakers transcribe in the cloud, which means the provider receives the audio by design, whatever happens to it afterwards.
Notey's answer
Notey is a Mac app. Recording, transcription, speaker separation, search and reading your meetings happen on the Mac with no account and no network. What follows is about the two things that do send data: sync, and AI notes.
Sync between your own Macs
Sync is optional, part of the paid plans, and covers one person's own Macs.
- Encrypted on your Mac before it leaves. Each meeting is encrypted with a key derived from a recovery key.
- The recovery key exists only on your Macs. Notey shows it once when sync is set up; it has no copy and cannot make a new one.
- Notey stores ciphertext it cannot read. The service holds the copy your Macs sync through, and cannot open it.
- What is encrypted and travels: transcripts, notes and who wrote them, speaker names, lines you moved, questions you asked and their answers, projects, Mac names, and recognised voices.
- What does not travel: the recording. It stays on the Mac that made it and is never uploaded, not even encrypted.
Keeping your meeting notes on two Macs covers setting it up.
What Notey can see
Following the privacy policy: your email address and subscription status if you have an account; for billing, how many minutes were summarised and on which day, with no title, participant or text; and, if you connect Google Calendar, read-only access to your events so Notey can notice a meeting starting. Like any service your Macs connect to, it also necessarily sees that a device connected and how much encrypted data it stored. The privacy policy is the complete statement.
AI notes are a separate flow
End-to-end encrypted sync does not cover AI notes, because a language model cannot summarise ciphertext. When you ask for a summary, a note or an answer from Ask Notey — or when a meeting ends with write-ups turned on — that meeting's transcript text and the names you gave people are sent to Notey's service and on to OpenAI, as a processor, to produce the result. The audio is never sent. OpenAI does not use it to train models, and Notey does not keep the transcript after the response. If you never ask for AI notes and leave write-ups off, no transcript text is sent at all.
What Notey does not claim
Notey does not call itself "zero-knowledge", because the phrase gets used for different things and some of them would be more than Notey says. It says what happens instead, and the list above is what it knows. Notey also holds no security certification that this guide could point to.
The trade-off
A provider that cannot read your notes cannot rescue them either. Lose the recovery key and the synced copy is unreadable, to you and to Notey; the meetings already on your Macs are untouched, because they are on your disks. Lost your recovery key? covers what that means in practice. Store the key in a password manager that syncs, or print it and keep it somewhere safe.
For most people recording meetings with clients or colleagues, that trade is the right way round: a lost key is recoverable by being careful, and a provider that can read everything is a risk nobody in the meeting agreed to. Encryption decides who can read a copy, not how long it should exist; a meeting recording retention policy covers that.
Frequently asked questions
Is "encrypted in transit and at rest" the same as end-to-end encryption?
No. In transit and at rest protects data on the wire and on the provider's disks, but the provider holds the keys and can read it. End-to-end means only the endpoints — your devices — can decrypt it.
Can Notey read my synced meetings?
No. Each meeting is encrypted on your Mac before it leaves, with a key derived from a recovery key that exists only on your Macs. Notey stores ciphertext it cannot read.
If my notes are end-to-end encrypted, how does the AI summarise them?
It cannot summarise ciphertext. In Notey, asking for AI notes sends that meeting's transcript text to Notey's service and on to OpenAI as a processor. That is a separate flow from sync, happens only when you ask or have write-ups on, and is described in the privacy policy.
What can an end-to-end encrypted provider still see?
Usually metadata: your account's email address, how much you store, when your devices connect, and billing or usage records. Ask each vendor for its list.
Does Notey describe itself as zero-knowledge?
No. It says what it does instead: meetings are encrypted on your Mac, the key is only on your Macs, and Notey holds ciphertext. The things it does see, such as your email address and usage counts, are listed in its privacy policy.