About the Project

Note Takers is a Generative AI (GenAI) powered app that turns spoken conversations into clear, organized notes. Record a lecture, meeting, or any spoken content, and the app converts the speech to text, then uses Generative AI like Google Gemini and OpenAI GPT to clean it up, summarize it, and structure it into notes you can actually use.

You choose how the audio gets transcribed. Use the built-in on-device speech-to-text engine and your recording never leaves your phone, or send it to our server for a larger, more accurate open-source model when precision matters more than convenience. Either way, your audio is never left exposed in transit or in storage.

That guarantee comes from combining Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and salted secure hash algorithm into a privacy-protected transmission mechanism and workflow that ensures:

  • (1) the audio file's chunks transferring from the app to the server cannot be decrypted and the audio content cannot be interpreted by anyone else;
  • (2) the stored chunks on the server waiting for the speech-to-text process are protected and cannot be read by anyone besides the server itself;
  • (3) the speech-to-text process on the server is a stateless process that transcribes chunks on the fly;
  • (4) once an encrypted chunk is transcribed, the chunk is deleted from the server;
  • (5) the stored text transcripts on the server are encrypted and protected so no one else in the world (even the server itself) other than the sender app can read them; and,
  • (6) once the server passes a stored encrypted transcript back to the app, the transcript is deleted from the server.
VIP Research Group's Note Takers app is built for students, researchers, and professionals who need to capture lectures, meetings, or any spoken content without typing a single word. Every stage, from the raw audio to the final transcript, stays encrypted and under your control.

From tapping record to reading a polished note, the app handles everything on its own: capturing audio from different sources, splitting long recordings into manageable chunks, transcribing them to text, and then calling on Generative AI to summarize key points or expand on topics as needed. No manual cleanup required, so you can stay focused on the conversation instead of your notes.

How to Use the App

From recording to polished AI notes in five easy steps — and a way to try it without installing anything.

1
Download & Install

Get the app with the Download APK button above (or Google Play). Open it and allow the microphone so it can hear your lectures and meetings.

2
Record or Import

Tap record to capture a lecture or meeting live, or import an existing audio file — it is copied safely into the app's private storage.

3
Transcribe Your Way

Choose the on-device engine for total privacy, or the server engine for top accuracy. Pick your language and provider in Settings — the app only shows what is available for you.

4
Let AI Polish Your Notes

Turn the raw transcript into clean, organized notes: summaries, key points and expanded explanations powered by Generative AI (Gemini / GPT).

5
Edit & Organize

Refine everything in the built-in editor — colors, highlights, photos — and keep it all encrypted so only you can read your notes.

No App? Try It Online

Test our live speech-to-text right in your browser — nothing to install, nothing saved.

Try Live Transcribe →

Your journey through the app

From voice to secure, polished notes — here is the whole flow at a glance.

📱 On-device 100% private ☁️ Server encrypted, top accuracy 🎙 Record or import audio 📝 Transcribe choose your engine 🤖 AI Notes summarize & organize ✏️ Edit colors, photos, highlights 🔒 Saved

Every screen, explained

A quick tour of the interfaces you will use inside the app.

Home — Your Recordings

All your recordings in one list with their transcription status. Tap a recording to transcribe it, open its notes, share it or delete it — a running server transcription can be stopped and restarted with one tap.

Recorder

Capture lectures and meetings with pause/resume — recording keeps running in the background. You can also import existing audio files; they are copied safely into the app's private storage.

Live Dictation

Speak and watch your words appear in real time. A smart provider menu shows only the engines available to you right now — unavailable ones are grayed out automatically.

Language Models

Download compact on-device models for your languages and manage them anytime. Once downloaded, transcription works completely offline — no internet needed.

AI Notemaking

Turn a raw transcript into structured notes with one tap: summaries, key points, and expanded explanations generated by Gemini or GPT — you choose the AI in Settings.

Note Editor

A rich-text editor to polish your notes: text colors, highlights, and photos inline with the text. Your edits are saved encrypted on your device.

Settings & Providers

Add your AI keys and pick your speech-to-text provider. The app checks which providers and models are available in your country and hides what wouldn't work.

Dashboard

See your usage at a glance: recordings, transcriptions, AI tokens and estimated costs per day and per model — handy to keep an eye on your API spending.

How to Use STT

A free speech-to-text API for developers who want to add transcription to their own apps — no signup, no API key.

No API key required Free for research & prototyping Whisper, Nemotron & Qwen3 engines CORS-enabled — call it from the browser
# one-shot transcription, no API key curl -X POST "https://notetakers.vipresearch.ca/stt/v1/transcribe" \ -F file=@meeting.wav \ -F engine=whisper \ -F language=en

Full endpoint reference with copy-paste examples in cURL, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP and Dart.

View Developer Docs

About Us

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Dr. Maiga Chang
Supervisor

Dr. Maiga Chang is a Full Professor in the school of Computing and Information Systems at Athabasca University, Canada

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Our Goal

GenAI Supported Note Takers turns spoken audio into organized, AI-enhanced text notes in real time, drawing on multiple speech-to-text engines for accuracy across languages and accents. Every recording and note is encrypted end-to-end, and our built-in Ask Your Notes assistant lets you search and chat with your own notes instantly.

Our Team

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Siwar Habli
Current Member

Siwar Habli is a software engineering student at ISSAT Sousse, Tunisia

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Jagrit Acharya
2024-2025

Jagrit Acharya is a graduate student at University of Calgary, Canada (2023-2025)

Videos

Note Takers - App

This video shows users the Generative AI (GenAI) supported Note Takers app that VIP Research Group presents.

Publications

Frequently Asked Questions