Granola App Guide: Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android and Watch

Granola runs on five surfaces, and only two of them can capture a video call. The Mac app (macOS 14 or later) and the Windows app (Windows 10 or later) transcribe your microphone and system audio live, with no bot joining Zoom, Google Meet or Teams. The iPhone and Android apps handle in-person meetings and outbound phone calls only, because phones do not let one app hear another app's audio. Apple Watch starts notes from your wrist and passes them to the iPhone. Every app is included on Basic, the free plan ($0 per user per month). Install the desktop app first. Add the phone app only if you also meet in person.

Which Granola app captures what

The split follows one rule: the desktop apps hear everything your computer plays, and the phone apps hear only the room. That makes the desktop app the core of any setup, whether you host the call or join as a guest, and it needs no Zoom host permission or meeting-platform setup. The browser is a reading surface. The grid below is the short version of what each download does and where it stops, so you can skip the apps you will never open.

Getting the Mac and Windows apps running

Granola ships a standard installer for each desktop system, a .dmg for the Mac and an .exe for Windows. There is no Granola password. You sign in with Google, Microsoft or an SSO provider, so you need a Google Workspace, personal Gmail or Microsoft account ^[1]. Microsoft sign-in means cloud Microsoft 365 calendars on Exchange Online; on-premises Exchange servers are not supported, and neither is Apple Calendar. Calendar access is read-only: Granola reads attendees, times, dates and titles to label each meeting.

On a Mac you grant two permissions: Microphone, and Screen and System Audio Recording. The second one sounds broader than it is. No video is captured; the permission lets Granola hear the other side of the call. Windows grants both at install, and you only need the microphone enabled. From then on, a notification appears one minute before any calendar meeting with two or more attendees. Click it, open the meeting's note or press New Note, and transcription starts. Nothing starts on its own, and a meeting you never started cannot be recovered later.

Updates arrive about twice a week, and the desktop app checks for them roughly every 10 minutes and installs them itself. Do not park it on an old build. An app more than 4 weeks out of date asks you to update, and after 6 weeks it stops working until you do. Uninstalling deletes nothing, since notes live in your Granola account. A few extras are Mac-only: voice typing (in beta) and shared-screen snapshots on macOS 14 or newer. The camera Watermark that tells other attendees you are taking notes needs macOS 14 or Windows 11.

iPhone, Android and Apple Watch

The iPhone app comes from the App Store, except in China, where it is not listed; the Android app comes from Google Play and launched in July 2026. Neither requires a paid plan. The limit is technical. Phones do not let apps capture audio from other apps, so the mobile apps cannot transcribe Zoom, Google Meet or other virtual meeting calls ^[2]. They use the active microphone instead, built-in or Bluetooth. Audio is cached during the meeting, then deleted from Granola and third-party systems once transcription completes. There is no recording to replay.

Mobile output differs from desktop in small but real ways. Notes are generated only after you tap end, and they take longer than on a computer. Speakers appear as Speaker A and Speaker B rather than Me and Them. Mobile picks one language per meeting from 17 supported, against more than 30 on desktop; Polish and Ukrainian are mobile-only. Android adds two quirks: recordings under about 5 minutes may not produce notes, and the account-wide training opt-out toggle is not yet in the Android app, so flip it on another device. Watch your Bluetooth earbuds, too. A connected device can become the microphone and pick up very little.

Phone calls from the mobile apps

Both phone apps transcribe outbound calls only, placed through Granola's built-in dialer; iOS and Android do not allow inbound calls to be captured. Setup takes one verification call: you answer it and enter a 6-digit code. The person you call sees your own registered number as caller ID. Calls work in about 40 countries, including the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Japan, India and Australia, minus two cases: India-to-India calls and numbers on Australia's Telstra network ^[3]. Android needs app version prod-261028.3 or later. One phone number can belong to one Granola account at a time.

The Android setup itself reminds you that notice and consent may be required to record a call. Take that literally. Granola places the responsibility for consent on you and your organization, not on the app, and its advice for in-person meetings and phone calls is to disclose out loud. Say it at the start. For video calls, the desktop app offers an automated chat message and the Watermark as per-user options on every plan, but both give notice rather than consent, and neither reaches a phone call.

Apple Watch

The Watch app is free and works only with the iPhone. It needs watchOS 11 or later plus the latest Granola iPhone app; older watches do not show Granola at all. It records on the Watch itself, even offline, and needs a connection only to sync to the iPhone, where notes are generated and then appear on your Mac or Windows computer too. Accept two habits before you rely on it. A chime and wrist tap mark the start and end of every recording, and the chime cannot be turned off even on a silenced Watch. An interrupted recording can sync its partial audio but cannot be resumed.

What still needs the desktop app

Treat the phone as a capture device, not a control panel. Workspaces are created only on desktop. Custom templates are created and applied there too, though phone notes pick them up after syncing. Sharing to Notion, Slack or HubSpot, managing calendar sync and moving notes between accounts also require the desktop app. The phone shows a short list of upcoming events, while desktop shows the next 14 days. Only one account can be signed in on a phone at a time, and workspace switching works on Android while iPhone and iPad switching is still listed as coming soon.

Granola Chat, the assistant that answers questions across your meetings, runs on Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android (version prod-260911.1 or later), but not on iPad. Pre-meeting briefs, a paid feature, show up on macOS, Windows and iOS. Business costs $14 per user per month, billed monthly. A phone note reaches the desktop only after transcription and summary finish; until then it exists only on the phone. The web app at notes.granola.ai views and edits notes but cannot transcribe. Notes are cached on each device, so you can read and edit them offline. Transcription still needs a connection.

Deleted iPhone notes are restored from the trash on desktop (Mac or Windows) or in the Android app. On Basic, every app shows only the last 30 days of notes; older notes are kept, not deleted, and return when the workspace upgrades, as our Granola pricing guide explains. For the first meeting itself, from the notification to templates, see how to use Granola.

Rolling Granola out on managed devices

On Windows, the installer puts Granola in each person's own AppData\Local\Programs folder, so updates need no admin rights and no managed-update setup. It supports a silent install with the /S flag and deploys in Intune as a Win32 app with install behavior set to User ^[4]. Avoid an all-users install. A copy in C:\Program Files needs admin approval for every update and eventually stops working. Virtual desktops such as Citrix and Azure Virtual Desktop are not officially supported, so test a pilot seat before a wider push.

On macOS, managed updates replace the built-in updater with a script your MDM runs as root every 15 minutes, plus a device-level DisableAutoUpdate setting. The script needs Granola 7.466.0 or later, installed in /Applications and owned by root, and it installs only when nobody is transcribing or actively using the app. Granola documents steps for Jamf Pro, Iru (formerly Kandji), Microsoft Intune, JumpCloud and Rippling. Admins can pre-grant the Accessibility permission with a PPPC profile, and a DisableOAuth setting removes personal Google and Microsoft sign-in to force SSO.

Phones need one warning. Granola does not support Intune app protection during sign-in, so Conditional Access policies that demand app protection or approved client apps push mobile sign-in to Edge until an admin changes the policy. MDM/Intune app wrapping on iOS is an Enterprise feature. Enterprise starts from $35 per user per month. SSO also sits on Enterprise and needs 50 active members or a 50-seat Enterprise commitment, so smaller teams sign in with their Google or Microsoft accounts on every device.

The bottom line

Download the Mac or Windows app first; it is the only Granola app that captures Zoom, Meet and Teams, and it does so without a bot. Add the iPhone or Android app for in-person meetings and outbound calls, and the Watch only if you already carry an iPhone and want one-tap notes from your wrist. Everything installs free on Basic. The real limits are platform rules, not plan gates: phones cannot hear other apps, iPad has no Chat, and setup work such as templates and workspaces stays on the computer.