# News: Google ships AI Edge Foresight: a free, fully offline Mac meeting notetaker on EmbeddingGemma 2

> Google released AI Edge Foresight on 8 October 2026: a free Mac app, optimised for Apple Silicon, that transcribes system and microphone audio, polishes shorthand notes, answers questions live from a transcript and a user-supplied knowledge base (PDFs, Docs, Office files, Markdown, web bookmarks), and runs completely offline on the on-device EmbeddingGemma 2 model (740 million parameters), with a Gemma 4-powered assistant for chat. The split-screen shorthand-plus-AI-notes format mirrors Granola's, and capture works across apps and for in-person meetings without a bot joining the call.

Human page: https://testedactually.com/news/google-ai-edge-foresight/
Mirror: https://testedactually.com/news/google-ai-edge-foresight.md
Published: 2026-10-09

## What changed

Google released AI Edge Foresight on 8 October 2026: a free Mac app, optimised for Apple Silicon, that transcribes system and microphone audio, polishes shorthand notes, answers questions live from a transcript and a user-supplied knowledge base (PDFs, Docs, Office files, Markdown, web bookmarks), and runs completely offline on the on-device EmbeddingGemma 2 model (740 million parameters), with a Gemma 4-powered assistant for chat. The split-screen shorthand-plus-AI-notes format mirrors Granola's, and capture works across apps and for in-person meetings without a bot joining the call.

## What it means for buyers

A first-party, free, offline entrant lands in the meeting-notes category our comparison tracks, and it attacks from the two directions buyers care about: zero price and zero cloud. Granola popularised the local-capture, bot-free format and now competes with a Google app that never sends audio off the machine, so privacy-led pitches and per-seat pricing both come under pressure; it also doubles as evidence for the local-llm lane that sub-billion-parameter models now carry sustained productivity workloads on consumer hardware. Limits to weigh: Mac-only today, and Google positions it as an Edge showcase, so long-term support is uncommitted.

## Sources

- [1] TechCrunch: Google releases a new local-first Granola competitor - https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/08/google-releases-a-new-local-first-granola-competitor/ (launch report: offline operation, EmbeddingGemma 2, formats, checked 2026-10-09)
- [2] Google: AI Edge Foresight - https://developers.google.com/edge/foresight (vendor product page, verified live 2026-10-09)

TestedActually tracks pricing and programme changes as dated, sourced events: https://testedactually.com/news/.