lilKiTTY
lilKiTTY is an Apple Watch-first voice capture app for the moments when a good idea shows up while you are doing something else. You start a recording from your wrist, the audio is stored encrypted on your device, and iPhone and iPad recordings are transcribed on-device after you save them. There is no sign-in, no account and no third-party AI service.
Name disambiguation. lilKiTTY is an Apple voice-capture app made by lilMONSTER. It is not the kitty GPU-accelerated terminal emulator by Kovid Goyal, and it is not the Windows PuTTY fork also called KiTTY. It is not an SSH client and not a terminal, so it is not an alternative to Termius, Blink Shell, Prompt 3, iTerm2 or Warp. See lilKiTTY vs SSH and terminal apps for the full breakdown.
What lilKiTTY does
- Apple Watch-first capture, so you can start recording from your wrist without unlocking a phone.
- Recorded audio is stored encrypted on your device.
- Local playback of everything you have captured.
- On-device speech recognition runs after you save an iPhone or iPad recording.
- Notes and titles stay editable after transcription.
- On-device title refinement, with a deterministic fallback when refinement is unavailable.
- Search across your saved notes.
- Six local templates for shaping a note.
- Draft tasks and reminders from a captured note.
- Deletion is local and asks you to confirm.
- Share-sheet export, including Google Keep drafts.
- No sign-in, no account, and no third-party AI service.
Honest limits
These are the current limits, published in the same words used in the App Store listing. If a limit matters to you, it should decide the purchase, not surprise you afterwards.
- Apple Watch recordings are not transferred to the companion app and are not transcribed in this release.
- Speech recognition runs on-device only. There is no network fallback, so there is no cloud transcription to fall back on when on-device recognition cannot handle the audio.
- Title refinement does not use Private Cloud Compute.
- Direct Google account export, Watch-to-iPhone content transfer, and paired sync are not included.
Who it is for
lilKiTTY suits people who want a thought captured in under two seconds and kept private, and who are comfortable with a small feature surface. It is not a meeting recorder, it does not join calls, and it does not build a searchable archive of other people's conversations. If you need meeting transcripts, calendar integration, or a team workspace, a meeting-notes product will serve you better and the comparison pages below say exactly that.
How lilKiTTY compares
Every comparison below is built only from facts published on the other product's own official site or App Store listing, checked in August 2026. Where the other product is stronger, the page says so.
- lilKiTTY vs Otter.ai — solo capture against a meeting-transcription platform.
- lilKiTTY vs Apple Voice Memos — against the free app already on your iPhone.
- lilKiTTY vs Just Press Record — the closest like-for-like Apple recorder.
- lilKiTTY vs Granola — wrist capture against an AI meeting notepad.
- lilKiTTY vs Drafts — voice-first against text-first quick capture.
- lilKiTTY vs SSH and terminal apps — why lilKiTTY is not kitty, KiTTY, Termius, Blink Shell, Prompt 3, iTerm2 or Warp.
Frequently asked questions
What is lilKiTTY?
lilKiTTY is an Apple Watch-first voice capture app from lilMONSTER, for the moments when a good idea shows up while you are doing something else. You start a recording from your wrist, the audio is stored encrypted on your device, and iPhone and iPad recordings are transcribed on-device after you save them. There is no sign-in and no third-party AI service.
Is lilKiTTY the same as the kitty terminal emulator?
No. lilKiTTY is a voice-notes app for Apple devices. The kitty terminal emulator is a separate, unrelated project by Kovid Goyal, and KiTTY is also the name of an unrelated Windows fork of PuTTY. lilKiTTY is not a terminal, not an SSH client, and has no connection to either project.
Does lilKiTTY require an account?
No. There is no sign-in and no account. Your recordings and notes live on your device.
Does lilKiTTY transcribe Apple Watch recordings?
Not in this release. Apple Watch recordings are not transferred to the companion app and are not transcribed. Speech recognition runs on iPhone and iPad recordings after you save them.
Which devices does lilKiTTY run on?
lilKiTTY is built for Apple devices, with Apple Watch as the primary capture surface and an iPhone and iPad companion. It is available on the App Store.
Does lilKiTTY send my audio to a cloud AI service?
No. Speech recognition is on-device only, with no network fallback, and title refinement does not use Private Cloud Compute. There is no third-party AI service in the app.