Installation

What you need

• macOS 15 or later.
• A Mac with Apple silicon or an Intel processor. MindLake is one universal app that runs on both.
• An internet connection the first time you open it, to start the free trial, and now and then after that. Trial and licence explains how often.
• Space for the on-device models you choose during setup: about 600 MB for speech recognition, about 210 MB for telling speakers apart, about 190 MB for reading aloud, and between 3.6 GB and 15.4 GB for a local AI model if you want one.
• iCloud Drive, if you want your notes on your iPhone too. It’s optional: without it, your vault stays on your Mac or in another cloud folder you choose.

On an Intel Mac

Intel Macs have no Neural Engine, which the faster speech models run on. On an Intel Mac, MindLake recommends Apple Speech, the recogniser built into macOS, for transcription. Settings ▸ Local Models opens with what it recommends for your Mac and why, and marks the models that would be slow there.

Summaries on your Mac

Summaries written on the Mac itself use Apple Intelligence, which needs macOS 26 on a Mac that supports it. If you don’t have it, you can download a local Gemma model in Settings ▸ AI, or connect a cloud AI with your subscription or your own API key. Transcription doesn’t depend on any of this: it always runs on your Mac. See Chats.

What it costs

MindLake is free for 14 days, with no card and no account; starting the trial needs an internet connection. After that it is £19 (€19, $19), once, for up to three Macs at a time, and buying it signs you in to a MindLake account. Publishing notes to the web is separate, with a plan of its own. See Trial and licence and Pricing.

MindLake is made for Mac and iPhone. If you’d like it on another platform, you can leave your email on the download page.

Install MindLake

The Mac app isn’t on the Mac App Store. You download it from this site.

1. Open the download page and choose Download for Mac. You get a zip file.
2. Open the zip if your browser hasn’t already, then drag MindLake into your Applications folder.
3. Open MindLake from Applications. As with any app from the web, macOS asks you to confirm the first time you open it. MindLake is signed and notarised, so it opens normally.

The welcome window opens and walks you through setup. Carry on with First run.

Updates

MindLake updates itself. It checks for new versions in the background, and each update is signed, checked and installed in place. To check straight away, choose MindLake ▸ Check for Updates….

To see which version you have, open Settings ▸ General. The About section at the top shows the version, with a Copy button for when you write to support.

The iPhone app

The iPhone companion is in testing and comes to the App Store at launch. MindLake on iPhone explains how to connect it to your vault.

Uninstall

If you want to use your licence on another Mac later, first choose Deactivate This Mac… in Settings ▸ Publishing, so this Mac gives its place back. Then quit MindLake and drag it from Applications to the Bin. Your notes aren’t inside the app: your vault is an ordinary folder, and removing MindLake leaves it where it is.