Troubleshooting Notetaker recording and audio

If Notetaker will not start, voices are missing, or recording stops on its own, go to the matching section below. Recovery differs depending on whether audio was saved on your device or never captured.

Recording will not start

Until setup is complete, every way of starting a note — menu bar or Windows tray, keyboard shortcut, Flow Bar record button, Home page Notetaker widget, automatic calendar start, the notepad's Record button, and resuming after a restart — opens onboarding instead. Reinstalling Flow, signing in on a new device, or resetting your account returns you to the start of onboarding; your existing synced meetings stay readable.

1. Complete setup, including the recording permissions below.

2. Start your note again.

3. Click the Flow Bar pill to open the notepad and check the Transcript tab for captured speech.

Closing the notepad does not stop recording — use the pill's stop control — and reopening it keeps your note intact. Signing out or switching accounts rechecks access for the current account.

Access and organization restrictions

If your plan or device does not allow recording, opening Notetaker shows an availability screen explaining why, and past meetings are not deleted. Dismissing a recording-block message does not unblock recording; pressing Record or opening another meeting brings it back.

• BAA: Notetaker works alongside a signed personal or organization BAA, so you do not need to revoke your BAA to record meetings. For an organization with a BAA, an administrator turns Notetaker on in the Admin Portal. If Notetaker still appears blocked, update Wispr Flow to the latest version, then contact support if it remains blocked.

• Organization block: "Notetaker is unavailable" means an organization setting blocks it — contact your administrator. An organization-wide block takes priority over an attendee restriction.

• Attendee restriction: "Notetaker blocked for this meeting" means an administrator restricted attendees on the calendar invite; the notepad comes forward and nothing is recorded. Contact your administrator — Got it does not lift the policy. It applies only to calendar-linked meetings Flow confirms as blocked, so an ad-hoc recording still works.

Where Notetaker is visible but starting notes is restricted, its entry points show an Unlock Notetaker explanation; calendar syncing is unaffected. Access granted to you individually keeps working even when Notetaker is off for the rest of your organization, and removing it takes effect immediately without a relaunch. Individual subscriptions have full access, including personal plans billed at a Business or Growth price that are not part of a team. Organization plans and policy locks are unlocked only by your administrator.

Complete recording permissions

Microphone access captures your voice; system audio captures other participants. "Complete setup to start Notetaker" lists only the permissions missing when setup opened, and recording stays blocked until required access is confirmed and setup closes. Back or Escape closes the notepad without starting recording. On Windows, no system-audio permission row is required; microphone availability is checked when capture starts. On older unsupported Macs, "System audio not available" has no action button and recording is blocked.

Microphone on Mac

1. Click Turn on beside Enable Microphone.

2. Enable Wispr Flow in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone.

Setup checks for the grant for about 30 seconds, then shows "Microphone enabled" or makes Turn on available to retry.

System audio on Mac

When required permissions are granted, setup shows "All set!" and closes. Turning off permission during recording stops capture and brings setup back.

Notetaker isn't getting any audio

When your microphone or system audio delivers no sound at all, at the start of a meeting or part-way through, Flow restarts that source for you up to three times in the first half-minute; speech captured before and after recovery stays in the note.

If audio has not returned after about 36 seconds, the Flow Bar shows "Notetaker isn't getting any audio". Choose Restart Flow to relaunch the app, or Dismiss to close the card. It stays until audio returns, you dismiss it, or the meeting ends; if dictation or another notification covers it, it returns about ten seconds later.

Your voice is missing

Notetaker captures the system default input — physical or virtual, including speech routed through a virtual cable set as the default input on Windows. There is no in-app device picker.

1. Check your microphone's physical mute switch.

2. Open your system input settings; on Mac, System Settings → Sound → Input. During an active recording in a non-shared note, the notepad's ⋯ menu offers audio settings with a microphone meter, and clicking the device name opens the same system settings.

3. Select a working microphone as the system default.

4. Speak a short phrase and confirm your words appear in the transcript.

After 3 minutes of continuous silence from your microphone, "No sound from your mic for the past 3 minutes" offers Microphone settings or Ignore, and continued silence can trigger "Still there? Notetaker isn't hearing anything". The warning clears after about a second of real audio, and does not appear if your microphone already produced transcript text or you chose Ignore for this recording.

Other participants are missing

Flow retries interrupted system audio while continuing to record your microphone. If recovery fails, start a new recording; an active microphone does not prove other participants are being captured.

Windows output devices

Flow captures active output devices, including a meeting app's non-default output. Changing the default output or briefly disabling and re-enabling a device does not stop capture. A device another app holds exclusively is skipped while other devices continue.

If system-audio capture fails mid-meeting, Flow restarts it for you and keeps recording your microphone throughout. Recovered audio stays lined up with your microphone track, and other participants' transcript lines after recovery keep their correct times.

1. Stop the affected recording.

2. Start a new recording to restore system-audio capture.

3. Check for another participant's words in the new transcript.

A recording stopped unexpectedly

To disable end-of-call stops, turn off Settings → Notetaker → Stop the Notetaker when the meeting ends; this does not remove the recording-length limit. Call-end detection starts once you have joined, not in the lobby, and on Mac it stops if accessibility permission is turned off, until you grant it again.

Choose Keep on a pending-stop warning to continue, or Resume on an automatic-stop notice to continue in the same note; Stop ends recording immediately, regardless of a countdown. Resume keeps the earlier transcript and waits for a still-saving recording to finish before starting, so you do not need to click again; a resumed stretch with no new audio closes out without a duplicate summary, and one that added audio is processed as new material for the same note.

Summaries for resumed meetings

If a summary was already created for the earlier part of the meeting and the resumed stretch added at least 20% more audio, or 5 new minutes, Flow uploads the full recording on its own and replaces the partial transcript and summary with complete ones. The earlier summary stays on screen until the new one is ready, and the shared link updates with it.

Recover a failed or interrupted recording

If live transcription disconnects, Flow can keep recording locally while reconnecting and shows "You're offline. Don't worry, we're still recording!". Check your connection; see Offline meeting recording in Notetaker. Starting while offline requires confirmation on the live-transcript-unavailable card: Cancel creates no recording and leaves an existing session untouched, while Record starts offline recording with the original meeting details.

A recording did not finish saving

Your meeting audio stays on your device until the stop is saved and the audio is packaged. If the save does not complete, or Flow closes or your computer restarts while recording, reopen Flow: the recording is finished automatically on launch, including audio captured after a resume, and the note continues to its transcript and summary. An interrupted resume is recovered too, following the resumed-meeting summary rules above. Deleting a meeting discards its audio from your device.

A failed-start recovery card appeared

1. Read whether the card says audio was saved on this device or nothing was saved.

2. Select Try again to restart recording.

3. Check the reopened note for newly captured speech.

With saved audio, Try again reopens and records into that same meeting. With nothing saved, it starts a fresh recording and no transcript from the failed attempt will appear later.

Storage is running low or filled up

While you are recording, if your drive is close to full Flow shows a one-time "Storage almost full — About N min of recording left" alert, with roughly an hour of recording remaining or less, even if other tips are muted. Free up space before the drive fills.

If there is not enough free space to process a meeting after it stops, the meeting row in the hub and its note card show Storage full with a Retry button and a prompt to free up space, rather than staying in processing.

1. Free storage space on your device.

2. Click Retry on the meeting, or restart Wispr Flow.

3. Check the interrupted note for processing, or select Generate summary if offered.

Flow processes surviving audio automatically when eligible. Empty audio cannot be recovered; short recordings, failed starts and Mac user-switch recordings can require Generate summary. Storage failure at recording start can produce no warning and leave no local audio for later processing.

The note is waiting to upload or summarize

If the upload stalls, the meeting card and the Summary tab explain why and offer Retry, which nudges the existing upload without uploading the same audio twice.

A network block also shows a one-time notification, "Can't upload your meeting. Your network may be blocking it." A too-slow upload retries automatically, and the notice stays so you can retry at any time.

Disconnecting or sleeping interrupts the upload; reconnecting or waking resumes it automatically, without relaunching Flow. Meetings keep uploading while your computer is locked or idle, the meeting stays listed and reappears after an app restart, and a meeting that stopped while you were offline completes on its own once you reconnect.

1. Reconnect your device, or turn off the VPN or switch networks if the notice points to a network block.

2. Click Retry on the notice, or on a "Failed. Retry" row, if the upload remains waiting.

Retry also wakes an upload that appears to be in progress but is not moving; you can retry once every 15 seconds. Retrying while offline leaves the note waiting; after more than a day offline, automatic processing can wait for a later daily retry. While you are signed out, pending uploads are paused rather than attempted, so time signed out never uses up a note's retries, and signing back in starts them right away.

A meeting that cannot be completed ends with "We couldn't process your meeting" rather than waiting indefinitely, including one whose local audio is no longer on the device. Retryable upload errors retry automatically, but audio exceeding the upload size limit is a permanent failure. With Notetaker cloud sync turned off, meetings stay local and are picked up once you turn sync on; if a Cloud Sync message appears, follow that message or contact your administrator.

The meeting was too short or had no speech

A meeting with very little speech — roughly 50 words or fewer — finishes processing and shows "Transcript too short to meaningfully summarize" in place of a summary; a meeting with no usable speech at all shows "No meaningful audio recorded". Both are final: the transcript, if any, stays available, and there is nothing further to retry. If a short meeting still shows a Retry option from an earlier attempt, click Retry once and it will finish with one of these notices. A meeting that already has a real summary keeps it even if it is processed again with short or empty audio.

Empty recordings and failed starts with under ten seconds of audio are discarded unless they contain typed notes or resumed an existing meeting. Longer eligible recordings and accepted offline recordings with audio process automatically; other short or failed recordings can wait for Generate summary.

For incorrect speaker names, missing summaries or processing errors, see Troubleshooting Notetaker transcripts, summaries, and the hub.

Still need help?

Contact support if required access is enabled but recording still cannot start, voices remain missing in a new recording, or saved audio does not process after these steps.

Open Help and choose Talk to support under "Get in touch" to open the Contact Us dialog. Include your operating system, meeting app, microphone and audio devices, the exact error, approximate meeting length, and the steps you tried.