Is Granola AI safe? No audio kept, but transcripts stay until you delete them

The Morse teamPublished November 9, 202610 min read

As of November 9, 2026, Granola AI is safe by the usual security measures, with a SOC 2 Type 2 report and no audio kept after transcription, but your transcripts stay on Granola's servers indefinitely unless you set a deletion period (Granola). On the free Basic plan and on Business, Granola may use anonymized meeting data to improve its own models until you switch that off, and nothing in the meeting tells other participants that Granola is running unless the person using it turns on a notice.

We read Granola's security, pricing, and comparison pages, its privacy policy (effective September 8, 2026), its trust center's subprocessor list, and 19 of its help and API pages on November 9, 2026, plus the class action complaint filed against it in July 2026. Granola deserves credit for publishing post-mortems of its own security incidents, including the mistakes it made in responding.

Granola privacy settings at a glance

Each row is from Granola's own pages, read November 9, 2026.

Does Granola record audio?

Granola captures audio but says it doesn't keep it. On a Mac or Windows computer, Granola "passes audio directly from your microphone and system audio to our transcription provider" and "does not record or save audio or video at any point during the call" (Granola). On a phone, Granola "temporarily caches audio during the meeting" and deletes it from "all Granola and third-party systems" once transcription is done (Granola). The privacy policy says the same: "We do not retain or store such recordings once the transcription is created" (Granola).

The transcript is what stays. Granola captures your computer's combined audio stream and can't isolate one app, so music or a second call playing at the same time ends up in the transcript (Granola). Granola doesn't start by itself, but if you open a meeting's note before it starts, Granola "will automatically start transcribing at the scheduled meeting start time." On the Mac app, an optional feature also takes screenshots of a screen someone else shares and uploads them to Granola (Granola).

Which companies process your Granola meetings?

More than Granola's security page names. That page says Granola uses transcription providers "like Deepgram and Assembly" and AI providers "like OpenAI and Anthropic" (Granola). Its trust center lists 17 subprocessors, and 10 of them handle AI, transcription, or search (Granola trust center):

All 17 are listed with a US hosting location except Plain, a UK support platform. Granola says it doesn't let these providers train on your data and has "enterprise agreements preventing this" (Granola).

A provider can still keep data it doesn't train on, and Granola's help center gives one case. In Granola Chat, Business plans can pick Anthropic's Fable 5.1, and Granola says that when it's used, "Anthropic retains agent input-output logs for 30 days for trust and safety purposes" and those chats "are not subject to zero data retention" (Granola). Enterprise workspaces have Fable 5.1 off until an admin enables it, and HIPAA workspaces can't enable it at all. We explain the difference in what zero data retention means.

Does Granola train on your data?

Yes, its own models, unless you opt out or your company is on Enterprise. Granola's FAQ says "By default on Free and Business plans, anonymised data may be used for Granola's own model improvements" (Granola). To stop it, click your workspace name in the bottom-left corner, choose Settings, open Preferences, and turn off Use my data to improve models for everyone (Granola). The toggle isn't in the Android app yet, so change it on desktop or iPhone.

On Business, each person has to opt out on their own; there is no switch for the whole team (Granola). Enterprise customers "are opted out by default," and an admin changes that setting by emailing Granola's sales team (Granola).

Opting out doesn't reach back. Granola says it "cannot guarantee that anonymised data wasn't used before you changed the setting" (Granola), and its privacy policy says de-identified data already built into its models "will not be removed from those models and datasets" (Granola). We compare training defaults across apps in which AI companies train on your data.

Can other people tell you're using Granola?

Not unless you tell them. Granola's FAQ says "No bot joins your meeting" and "other participants will not see any additional attendee" (Granola). Its comparison page puts it more plainly: "No one else in the meeting sees a notification" (Granola).

Granola offers two notices, both off until you set them up: an automated chat message in Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, and Slack huddles, and a watermark on your video (Granola). In Zoom and Teams, the chat message posts only once at least one other person has joined, and only if the meeting allows chat (Granola). A pre-meeting consent page called Heads Up is for Enterprise workspaces only, and "Heads Up is off until an admin turns it on" (Granola). Granola's FAQ leaves the rest to you: "You are responsible for obtaining consent from participants."

That design is the subject of a lawsuit. Chamberlain v. Granola, Inc., filed July 30, 2026 in the Northern District of California, claims Granola intercepts participants' speech without consent and, by default, uses it to train its AI, under the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act and California's Invasion of Privacy Act, among seven claims (complaint). These are allegations, not findings. Our page on Otter AI covers a similar 2025 suit against a bot-based notetaker.

Who can see your Granola notes?

Only you, until you or your company share them. Granola says your notes are "never shared with any participants unless you share the link, or add the note to a folder in your team space," and that admins can't read your private notes (Granola, Granola).

Your Default link sharing setting decides who can open a new note's link: Anyone with the link, Only my company, or Private (Granola). As of November 9, 2026, Granola's help pages don't say which of the three a new Basic or Business account starts on, so look in Settings > Preferences > Data & sharing. Tightening it offers Update all notes, but loosening it applies only to new notes. A viewer can't read the full transcript, though they can hover over a point for context from it and ask Granola Chat about the meeting (Granola).

Three features can keep a note shared or stored after you change your mind:

• Slack. Sending a note to Slack posts a summary in the message itself, and "changing the note's sharing settings (for example, setting it to Private) does not remove or hide the summary text already posted in Slack" (Granola).
• Customer calls. On Business and Enterprise, an admin can turn on a shared folder that Granola fills by itself. Once an admin adds you, or you opt in, Granola watches for external sales and customer calls, and "Once the notes are ready, they're shared to Customer calls automatically" (Granola). By default, everyone in the workspace can see that folder. Calls Granola detects as sensitive aren't added automatically, and stopping your calls from being added leaves earlier ones shared.
• Legal holds. An Enterprise workspace can place a legal hold through Granola's API, and Granola then "preserves a custodian's notes, transcripts and attachments while any hold covering them is active. Custodians see no change in the product" (Granola API). If you're named in a hold, a note you delete may still be kept, and the app won't show it. We cover how stored records reach courts in can AI chats be subpoenaed.

How long does Granola keep transcripts?

Indefinitely, unless you set an automatic deletion period or delete them yourself. Granola's FAQ says notes and transcripts "are retained indefinitely unless deleted or a transcript auto-deletion period is set" (Granola). Auto-deletion removes transcripts after 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, or 1 year, and turning it on starts "a one-week cooldown" before anything is deleted (Granola). It deletes transcripts only, so the AI notes stay. On Enterprise, the admin's period overrides yours.

A deleted note waits in the trash for 30 days, and the trash isn't visible on iPhone (Granola). Deleting your account removes your data "within 30 days," and Granola backs up all data daily (Granola). If a directory your company manages controls your account, only your IT admin can delete it (Granola).

Has Granola had a security incident?

Yes, one that exposed data to a researcher, and Granola published what happened. An AssemblyAI key exposed in its iPhone beta left transcripts from 333 beta testers open until March 11, 2025, and Granola found that one outside address, matching Tenable's test, reached 29 transcripts from 16 testers (Granola). Granola admits it missed Tenable's first email. A separate flaw let old unmanaged Google accounts auto-join a company's workspace until May 23, 2025, and Granola found no one had used it (Granola).

Granola says it achieved SOC 2 Type 2 compliance in July 2025 (Granola). It is HIPAA compliant only on Enterprise with a signed BAA, which covers the desktop apps only, and it says it is not FERPA compliant (Granola).

How Morse keeps your meeting questions in your own browser

Most of what's above depends on settings you may not control. Your transcript sits on Granola's servers under the meeting-taker's link setting, their training toggle, and their admin's retention period and holds. Morse is an AI chat for the questions you have afterwards, like what a vague commitment from a client means or how to word the follow-up, and it stores those chats in your browser, encrypted, not on Morse's servers.

• Private, every new chat's starting mode, for working through what a meeting decided. Morse has zero data retention agreements with its inference, search, and other providers, so they keep nothing, while Granola's Fable 5.1 option leaves a 30-day log with Anthropic. Where a provider confirms zero retention on each reply, Morse checks it and refuses a reply that doesn't.
• E2EE, for a passage with a colleague's or client's words in it. Your browser checks the secure enclave's proof that it's genuine, then encrypts the message on your device so only that enclave can read it. Morse's servers relay text they can't read. E2EE runs open-weight models like GLM, Kimi, and DeepSeek on enclaves run by third-party providers, not by Morse, and it depends on the enclave hardware and attestation working as designed. It has no web search or image generation, and comes with Pro, at $19 a month.
• Anonymous, to ask GPT, Claude, or Gemini without your account behind it. Our proxy removes your account, email, and IP address and sends the question under Morse's own account. The provider sees the message without knowing it's you, and may keep it for a limited time to check for abuse, under its own policy, so leave attendees' names out.

There's no training toggle to find, because Morse doesn't train AI on your content, sell your data, or show ads (Morse privacy policy). Because we don't store chats, we usually have very little to give authorities. Clearing your browser or deleting your account removes your chats for good, and Morse can't recover them, so keep a copy of anything you'll need.

What to change in Granola before your next meeting

• Training: turn off Use my data to improve models for everyone, and on Business, ask each teammate to do the same. Morse doesn't train AI on your chats.
• Links: set Default link sharing to Private or Only my company, and choose Update all notes.
• Consent: turn on the automated chat message or the watermark, and say you're using Granola before you start.
• Transcripts: set an auto-deletion period you can live with, and keep the notes you need.
• Customer calls: if your workspace has it, check Sharing is on and choose Stop adding my calls if your calls shouldn't go to the whole team.
• Asking AI about a meeting afterwards: paste the part you need into a Private or E2EE chat on Morse, where the history stays in your browser.

Try a chat from the Morse home page without an account, or start free with no card needed.