Best AI Memory Apps 2026: 5 Ranked for Real Recall

The best AI memory apps in 2026 are Everpaper for a private, on-device Mac memory; ScreenPipe for developers building their own stack; Mem for cloud notes; and Granola for meetings. Limitless ranks only as a legacy option for existing owners. Rewind itself shut down in 2025 and is no longer a live choice.

Everpaper is our product. That is why it ranks first, and it is also why we will state its limits as plainly as the competitors' limits. Our test is demanding: can the app capture, retain, and cite a working day, rather than merely summarize one note after you save it?

TL;DR: the best AI memory apps 2026

Rewind is not ranked. The original Rewind Mac app stopped recording on December 19, 2025. If your question is specifically where former Rewind users should move, use our Rewind alternatives guide. This article stays focused on memory scope, citations, retention, and data path.

How we evaluated AI memory apps

A polished summary can hide a weak memory system. We used four criteria instead.

1. Capture scope. Does the app observe the working day, record conversations, or wait for a note? A memory cannot recall an event it never received.
2. Retention. Can you keep the underlying record long enough to revisit it? We distinguish a stored source from a generated summary because summaries discard detail.
3. Citations. Can an answer lead back to evidence, ideally a timestamped screen or transcript? Fluent text without a source is difficult to audit.
4. Data path. What remains on the Mac, what reaches the vendor, and what reaches outside AI or transcription processors? Encryption in transit is different from end-to-end encryption.

We also checked whether the product is actually available on August 4, 2026. That status check pushes Limitless to fifth place and removes Rewind from the live ranking. For a wider survey of local software, see the best private AI apps for Mac.

1. Everpaper: best living on-device AI memory for Mac

Best for: Apple Silicon Mac users who want their screen activity, meetings, and recurring work held in one local daybook.

Everpaper is a private, on-device daybook for macOS. Its Day Journal takes a screenshot of the front window every two minutes by default, runs OCR locally, and places those frames into a chronological day. Capture intervals can be 30 seconds, 1, 2, 5, or 10 minutes. You can mark an important moment with a note, pause for a meeting or personal time, and let the default idle pause stop capture after two inactive minutes. The Day Journal documentation explains the capture controls.

That makes it a living memory rather than a box of saved notes. Meetings join the same record through The Minutes, which records microphone and system audio as separate, time-aligned tracks and transcribes on the Neural Engine. Start it with ⇧⌘M, from the menu bar, or from The Index with ⌘K. The default speech model is Parakeet parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3; Whisper and the opt-in MOSS transcription-and-diarization model are also documented choices.

The recall path is why Everpaper leads this ranking. Ask the Book opens with ⇧⌘A and writes an answer only from matching days and frames. Its Sources list points to the exact frame, including the time, app, and window title. Clicking a source opens the original screen. Without any AI provider, search still returns deterministic cards for phone numbers, emails, links, and files with time-and-place stamps. Read the Recall documentation for the distinction between local search and provider-backed answers.

Cross-day memory lives in Second Brain. It extracts people, files, sites, projects, and topics, ties them to exact moments, and looks for repeated threads. Beliefs require evidence across at least two days and carry (tentative) or (likely) confidence markers. The gate is deliberate: Second Brain needs 5 days, 300 frames, 60 distinct things, and 3 recurring threads before it becomes Ready. Until then, it says it is still learning. The Second Brain documentation shows what becomes available after that gate.

Privacy and retention. Capture, OCR, transcription, storage, the knowledge graph, beliefs, search, and deterministic recall cards run locally without an account. Screenshots are kept for 30 days by default; options are 7, 30, 90, or Forever. Generative features wait until you configure a provider. Local choices include Ollama, LM Studio, oMLX, Apple Foundation Models, and an OpenAI-compatible localhost endpoint. Cloud providers require turning on Allow cloud AI to analyze your journal, which is off by default. An offline redaction pass runs at capture and again before every outbound AI call. See the privacy model before deciding whether screen capture fits your work.

Limits. Everpaper requires macOS 14.2 or later and Apple Silicon. Intel Macs are unsupported. There is no iOS, Android, Windows, Linux, or web app. Screen and System Audio Recording permission is required, meeting capture needs Microphone permission, and the speech model takes a few GB of disk space. The generative day narrative, Ask the Book prose, meeting Ask, Reflection, and Second Brain chat do nothing until a provider is configured. Beta builds expire after 15 days and stop new recordings, though existing days, meetings, search, and export remain available.

Pricing, checked 2026-08-04. Everpaper is in private beta with limited spots, with a founding-license option for early supporters — not a monthly subscription. There is no public price.

2. ScreenPipe: best for developers building their own memory stack

Best for: Developers who want local capture, a queryable store, and control over the agents that turn a day into memory.

ScreenPipe records screen, microphone, and system audio continuously. Its documented default screen rate is 1 FPS. It extracts accessibility-tree text around meaningful actions, falls back to Tesseract OCR, and offers local Whisper models from tiny through whisper-large-v3-turbo. Because it listens to system audio rather than sending a bot into the call, it works across meeting software.

The useful part for builders is the substrate. Data lives in ~/.screenpipe/db.sqlite plus a local data/ directory. An HTTP API runs at localhost:3030. Its MCP server can connect the record to Claude, Codex, Cursor, VS Code, or ChatGPT. “Pipes” are scheduled agents defined by a pipe.md prompt and a schedule, so a meeting-ended trigger can turn a transcript into an Obsidian note. Local models can run through Ollama. These details come from the ScreenPipe FAQ and current product documentation checked on 2026-08-04.

ScreenPipe can capture a day more fully than note apps and meeting-only tools. It does not hand you Everpaper's opinionated daybook, evidence-linked self-model, or finished citation interface. The local database and API preserve source material, but turning an answer into a dependable link back to one screen moment is your application work. ScreenPipe's official FAQ does not document current speaker-identification or diarization support.

Data path and limits. Local capture, OCR, Whisper transcription, search, and the API can work offline. Cloud transcription, cloud AI providers, team sync, archives, license checks, and connected-app proxies require network access. ScreenPipe supports macOS, Windows, and Linux, though its Linux desktop app is partial and Wayland behavior varies by compositor. Official troubleshooting guidance recommends lowering FPS, excluding heavy apps, or choosing whisper-tiny when resource use is high.

A material licensing change arrived on June 9, 2026. The source moved from MIT to the Screenpipe Commercial License. Current source is free for personal, non-commercial, educational, and research use, with a 7-day commercial evaluation. Commercial source use requires a paid license. Older MIT-licensed versions remain MIT. Calling current ScreenPipe “open source” without that date and distinction is inaccurate; “source-available” is the safer description.

Pricing, checked 2026-08-04 against supplied ScreenPipe pricing. Free is $0 with a 7-day Business trial, local capture, AI search, meeting notes, 50+ integrations, and 10 AI credits/month. Basic is $25/month or $250/year, with 150 credits and unlimited user-installed scheduled tasks and history. Business is $50/seat/month or $500/seat/year, with 400 credits, frontier Claude and GPT models, cloud sync, automations, and a managed team workspace.

3. Mem: best cloud note memory

Best for: Knowledge workers who consistently save notes and want strong AI retrieval across that written collection.

Mem is a cloud note workspace with Mem Agent, semantic search, automatic organization, PDF understanding, connected email on Pro, and one-click Markdown export. The input boundary is clear. It remembers notes you write, PDFs you upload, and connected material. It does not record the screen or join meetings, so it cannot reconstruct the quiet work between saved artifacts. Meeting Briefings prepare you for a meeting from stored context; Mem is not a meeting recorder.

Within note memory, that narrower scope can be a strength. You avoid a huge screen archive, and Mem Agent searches the material you deliberately kept. Proactive, the $99 monthly tier, tracks details, decisions, and open loops from what you save, then briefs you before meetings or deadlines. The official Mem pricing page describes Agent chat across saved material but does not document whether answers carry clickable note or PDF citations. Treat its unit of memory as saved material, not a timestamped working-day frame.

The privacy trade is explicit in Mem's pricing FAQ. Mem says data is encrypted at rest with AES-256 and in transit with TLS, “but it is not e2e encrypted” because the product provides intelligence on top of the data. Its servers can read note content to provide the service. There is no on-device or local-vault mode, and sign-in requires Google or Google Workspace. Mem also says it does not sell data or mine it for ads.

Limits. The free tier permits 25 notes, 25 Mem Agent messages, and search or chat across 25 PDF pages each month. Pro raises Agent usage to 250 messages monthly. A disciplined capture habit is still required. Miss a decision because you never wrote it down, and Mem has no passive screen history to recover it from.

Pricing, checked 2026-08-04. Free is $0. Mem Pro is $12/month with monthly billing and no annual discount shown. Mem Proactive is $99/month after a 7-day trial. The current official pricing page was the source for each figure.

4. Granola: best meeting-only memory

Best for: People whose useful memory is concentrated in meetings and who prefer a bot-free note workflow.

Granola captures microphone and system audio from its desktop app after you start a note. No bot enters the call. You can jot rough notes while it listens, then have the AI turn those notes and the transcript into a cleaner record. It supports macOS and Windows capture, mobile apps for in-person meetings, and a web app for viewing or editing. The web app cannot capture or transcribe meetings.

This is good meeting memory. Granola can chat within and across meetings, apply customized templates, and store a searchable history on paid plans. It does not capture documents, browsing, messages, or the work between calls. A full Tuesday with two meetings becomes two meeting records, not a cited account of the day.

The data path matters for privacy-conscious users. According to Granola's security page, audio goes to transcription providers such as Deepgram and AssemblyAI, while text goes to AI providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic for notes. Notes and transcripts are stored in a US-hosted AWS Virtual Private Cloud with encryption at rest and in transit. Granola says outside model providers do not train on user data. Granola itself trains on anonymized data by default on consumer tiers; users can opt out, while training is off for Enterprise teams.

Granola does not store meeting audio. That reduces retained audio, but it also removes playback as a verification path. Desktop transcripts default to Me and Them. Named speaker tags are available for Google Meet through a browser extension and Zoom on macOS, not across every platform. Granola's official product and pricing pages describe chat within and across meetings but do not publish whether each answer links to a precise transcript timestamp.

Pricing, checked 2026-08-04. Basic is free with "limited meeting history"; the official page does not publish the exact history cap. Business is $14 per user each month with unlimited notes and history, integrations, MCP, and API access. Enterprise is $35 per user each month with SSO, admin controls, and model training off for the team. No annual discount was shown on the official pricing page.

5. Limitless: a legacy and wind-down option only

Best for: Existing Pendant owners who need access during the promised 2026 support period.

Limitless moved the Rewind company's memory idea into a wearable Pendant and cloud transcription service. Meta announced its acquisition on December 5, 2025, and Pendant sales stopped that day. Recording in the Limitless desktop and web apps is disabled; existing Pendant customers retain mobile access and past recordings.

For those owners, the remaining memory covers spoken conversations captured by the Pendant. Transcription, notes, summaries, action items, and chat run through the Limitless cloud. Full recordings stay in the account until deletion or account closure, and audio retention can be set to a day, week, month, year, or forever. The Pendant requires proactive notice and consent from everyone recorded under the product's terms. The official current Limitless pages do not publish whether chat answers link to transcript timestamps.

The status facts outweigh the feature list. The Pendant is not sold. Desktop and web recording are disabled. Existing customers receive the Unlimited plan free and support “throughout 2026,” according to the official Limitless acquisition FAQ, checked 2026-08-04. Users in the EU, UK, Brazil, China, Israel, South Korea, and Turkey were cut off after the acquisition. Continuing service beyond the stated 2026 support window should not be assumed.

Pricing, checked 2026-08-04. There is no current Pendant price because it is no longer sold. The official site does not publish a paid price or purchasable plan for new customers. Existing customers get Unlimited free, with support promised throughout 2026. This ranking is useful only if you already own the hardware.

What happened to Rewind?

Rewind is defunct, so it is not a ranked live option. The company rebranded as Limitless in 2024. Meta announced its acquisition on December 5, 2025. The Rewind Mac app stopped recording on December 19, 2025, and downloads were removed. The current rewind.ai site is unaffiliated with the original company.

How to choose an AI memory app

Start with the source you need to remember.

• A whole Mac workday: Everpaper gives you a finished daybook and evidence path. ScreenPipe gives you lower-level capture and APIs for a system you assemble.
• Deliberately saved knowledge: Mem fits if notes and PDFs are the record you trust, Google sign-in is acceptable, and cloud-readable content is not a blocker.
• Meetings: Granola is the focused choice when a transcript and edited notes are enough. Read the meeting capture documentation to compare that scope with local recording.
• Existing wearable history: Limitless is for current Pendant owners managing a wind-down, not new buyers.

Then choose the evidence standard. A clickable frame answers “where did this come from?” better than a summary. A stored transcript provides more detail than meeting notes, while stored audio allows you to check what the transcript got wrong. Each extra layer raises storage and privacy costs.

Finally, inspect the data path before enabling AI. “Encrypted” can mean server-readable data protected at rest. End-to-end encryption, local processing, and optional cloud processing are different models. If your memory will contain client work, private messages, credentials, or health details, read the vendor's primary security and privacy pages. Our Mac privacy guide covers the broader on-device tradeoffs.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best AI memory app in 2026?

Everpaper is our pick for privacy-conscious Apple Silicon Mac users because it combines day-wide screen capture, meetings, cross-day memory, and links back to exact captured frames. Everpaper is our product, and it is still a Mac-only private beta. Developers who want to construct their own system should choose ScreenPipe. Mem is stronger for manual cloud notes, while Granola is narrower and better suited to meeting notes.

Can an AI memory app remember an entire day?

Only products with passive day-wide capture can approach that goal. Everpaper captures the front window periodically and places frames into a Day Journal. ScreenPipe continuously records screen and audio into a local store. Mem remembers what you save. Granola remembers meetings you start. Limitless now remembers Pendant conversations only for existing owners. Pauses, exclusions, retention settings, permissions, and missed capture still create gaps, so “entire” should never be read as infallible.

Which AI memory apps keep data on the Mac?

Everpaper keeps capture, OCR, transcription, storage, search, graph building, beliefs, and deterministic recall local by default. Its generative features can use local providers or an explicitly enabled cloud provider. ScreenPipe's capture, local Whisper, OCR, search, database, and API can work offline, with optional cloud paths. Mem is cloud-only. Granola sends audio and text through cloud processors. Limitless uses cloud transcription and AI. The Everpaper privacy documentation gives exact controls for its path.

Do AI memory apps provide citations?

Citation quality varies. Everpaper's Ask the Book lists exact source frames with time, app, and window title, and clicking one opens the original screen. ScreenPipe retains a local database and exposes an API, but developers must design the answer-to-source experience. Mem's official pricing page does not document clickable note or PDF citations. Granola's official pages do not publish cross-meeting timestamp-citation behavior, and the current Limitless pages do not publish transcript-citation behavior. A vendor saying “grounded in your data” is not evidence of a clickable source.

Is passive screen capture safe for confidential work?

It can expose far more than a normal note app. Password managers, private chats, customer records, and one-time codes may appear on screen. Use exclusions, pauses, short retention, and on-device processing. Everpaper performs offline redaction during capture and before outbound AI calls, but redaction should not replace careful capture controls. ScreenPipe documents local policy and PII-removal options. Your employer's policies and local recording laws still apply, especially when audio is involved.

Is Rewind AI still available in 2026?

No. The original Rewind company became Limitless in 2024. After Meta announced the Limitless acquisition, the Rewind Mac app stopped recording on December 19, 2025, and downloads were removed. The current rewind.ai site is unaffiliated with the original company. Existing Limitless Pendant customers have a separate support arrangement through 2026, but that does not revive Rewind.

Methodology and source policy

We compared scope, retention, citations, data flow, availability, and pricing. Facts were checked on August 4, 2026 against official product, pricing, security, and privacy pages.

Rankings favor a cited working-day record over a polished summary of one saved artifact. That choice makes Everpaper and ScreenPipe stronger here than they would be in a pure meeting-notes or writing-app ranking. For a different cut centered on connected knowledge rather than day capture, read our AI second brain apps guide. Everpaper's local Markdown and graph options are documented in Export.

Keep a private memory of your Mac

Everpaper is in private beta with limited spots. Join the waitlist at everpaper.app if you want a daybook that keeps capture, recall, and your working history on your Mac by default.