The live transcript in Notetaker

Use the Transcript tab to follow meeting speech, find earlier words and copy the conversation. Live text and speaker labels can change after the meeting.

Read the live transcript

Live Transcript is on by default in Settings → Notetaker → Transcription. Starting with it off still saves audio for post-meeting processing, and live transcription can be unavailable for a recording even when the setting is on. Turning it off mid-meeting hides the tab; turning it back on does not start live transcription for a meeting that began with it off, and Flow shows a message that the change applies to the next meeting.

• In-progress text: Words still being transcribed appear under the speaker who said them and keep that name once confirmed; a very brief switch stays in the current group until the text is confirmed. Your microphone and the meeting's audio each keep their own in-progress line, shown in the order speech started.

• Follow: New speech scrolls into view while you are at the bottom and not searching. Scrolling up or selecting text pauses following, so a selection is not lost; Jump to bottom resumes it.

• Markers: Sleep, offline gaps, pause/resume, Dictated and audio events can appear. Dictated means the microphone is being used for Flow dictation; system audio continues recording.

• Stop and resume: Trailing lines are saved above a pause divider timestamped when you pressed Stop, and remain when you reopen the meeting from the hub or quit Flow. After a resume, the live transcript is shown only when it holds at least one spoken line; if it caught no speech — recording offline, or live transcription unavailable — the tab shows the full processed transcript instead.

• Timestamps: Once a recording has finished, the clock time appears beside the speaker's name — for example Alex 2:28pm — following your system's language and region (2:28pm or 14:28), matching pause and resume markers. Only the first turn of each new minute carries a time. Times are not shown while a meeting is still recording, and transcripts imported from another app have none.

Translate what others are saying

When someone else speaks a supported language other than English, a tip appears on the Flow bar: Looks like someone is speaking [Language] — Notetaker can translate what others are saying to your preferred language. Choose Translate live transcript to open the Notepad on the Transcript tab with the live-translation language picker open, or Not now to dismiss it. The tip appears at most once per meeting, never while the Notepad is already open, and not again for a language you have already seen it for.

Edit or delete a transcript line

After the meeting, hover a line in your own transcript to show its actions: Pencil to edit the wording, Trash to delete the line and Flag to report it. Shared, read-only transcripts, lines still coming in live and translated rows do not offer these actions.

• Delete in one click: Trash removes the line straight away, without opening the editor. Once the deletion saves, focus moves to the line's Deleted disclosure, where Undo restores the text.

• If a deletion fails: The editor opens with the error message. Choose Try again to resend the deletion, or Cancel to close the editor and keep the line.

Deleted lines are left out of Copy transcript.

Search the transcript

Search and copy are disabled until the transcript has content. Search shortcuts work only with the Transcript tab active and focus outside text fields.

1. Open search with Cmd+F on Mac, Ctrl+F on Windows, or /.

2. Enter at least two characters. The match count appears in the search box.

3. Navigate with Enter/↓ for next or Shift+Enter/↑ for previous, or the ▲/▼ chevrons; matches wrap around and the current match scrolls into view.

Adding to a query — "not" to "not just", for example — moves you to its first match. Search ignores case, matches partial words and treats punctuation literally, with no case-sensitive or whole-word setting. It searches speech, not markers; translated rows use the displayed translation, not the original speech.

During recording, search uses the text present when the search started — clear and rerun the query to include newer speech or corrections. Escape clears and closes search, allowing following again when you are at the bottom. After recording stops, search uses the current transcript.

Understand speaker names

Until a name is available, each voice is labelled by where its audio came from: You for your microphone and Them for the meeting's audio. Names replace these labels when available, usually within a few seconds of someone speaking, and carry over when you Resume a recording. Each line is labelled from its own evidence, so grouping, colors, badges and copied text follow that line's own speaker; an identified voice keeps its name after a quiet stretch, and a continuous run stays under one speaker header. Click a speaker name to open or close its picker and correct it; reopening clears the search box.

• Labels settle as the meeting goes on: Flow can still correct the name on recent lines — roughly the last two minutes of speech. Older lines keep the name they were showing, so a later match to a different participant applies only to newer lines. Labels on your own microphone audio are not affected.

• Several unnamed voices: Everyone on the meeting's audio without a name yet shares one Them label, and moves into their own group as soon as a name is available. On your microphone, separated unnamed voices are numbered — You (Speaker 1), You (Speaker 2) — each with its own color, and those numbers are used in copied text. Names you assign and labels set on individual lines are always kept.

• Speaker colors: Other speakers' labels, name chips and mentions use a palette of 12 colors, which starts over at the 13th speaker in a meeting. Purple is reserved for your own You highlight, so no one else is shown in it. The colors are the same in the desktop app and in a shared note opened on the web.

• If a voice loses its name: After someone briefly speaks over a voice, the live view names recent lines after the participant who has said most of what that voice has spoken. A voice with no speaking history, or one where two participants are tied, keeps the label it already has, and a silent microphone voice is never given a new name.

What automatic naming needs

Automatic naming requires the attribute names setting, on by default, and naming availability for the recording; turning it off leaves unnamed labels. The supported meeting app must be using your microphone, and on Mac, Wispr Flow also needs Accessibility permission. Names are not immediate — Flow can detect the call and begin naming later — and unsupported layouts can leave speakers unnamed. Names come only from visible participant tiles, so keep a meeting window on screen; a window that is hidden, minimized, on another macOS Space or fully covered cannot be read, and speech stays unnamed until you uncover or restore one.

Your own name and the "(You)" label

Your speech can be labelled with your name even when your meeting tile is not marked as you, and a single voice in a microphone-only recording appears as You or Name (You). When it is unclear which voice said a line, Flow keeps your microphone's claim on your own speech. Flow uses a saved speaker rename before your profile name. First-name-only profiles can remain unnamed, and if another participant uses exactly your name, neither is resolved automatically.

The (You) label appears only on speakers linked to your own contact, so renaming a speaker to someone else never marks that person as you. If no speaker is linked to your contact, speech from your microphone is still labelled as you. A meeting that synced before this behaviour applied updates the next time you change it, or when you use Settings → Data → Hard refresh all notes.

When your microphone resolves to exactly one person — a single You or Name (You) speaker — your label and bubbles are purple in live, improved, imported and resumed transcripts. If more than one voice is heard on your microphone, if a microphone voice is identified as someone else, or if a speaker has been renamed by hand, every speaker keeps its usual color.

Matching speakers to meeting attendees

Flow matches the participants it sees to the people invited, so labels use the attendee's name as you know it. A tile can match by full name, a short or first name, a joined form of the name, the exact address on the invitation, or the part of that address before the @ sign. Names from your own contacts can match as well, including attendees with no name on the calendar invite. When a tile could belong to more than one attendee — two people named Alex, for example — or when two separate voices appear to claim the same name, Flow leaves one speaker unnamed instead of guessing; rename it yourself if you recognize the voice.

When every other voice has been identified and exactly one invitee is still unaccounted for, Flow gives the remaining voice that person's name — this commonly completes in-person, microphone-only one-on-ones that would otherwise end with an unnamed speaker. Flow leaves the voice unnamed instead when the evidence disagrees, the invitee list is incomplete, a meeting room or a declined invitee is on the invite, or the leftover audio looks like echo or media playback. Because of this, a stray sound such as a notification chime can occasionally pick up a real name. Names you saved yourself and manual speaker assignments are kept if the meeting is processed again.

When live text stops

Audio records locally during reconnection, and live text resumes when connectivity returns. Hovering the Flow bar's meeting pill can show Still listening · Reconnecting… when the Notetaker window is unfocused and the meeting is not wrapping up. Short interruptions catch up; longer outages can leave an Offline for <duration> — audio was captured and will be transcribed after the meeting marker, and post-meeting processing recovers missing words when saved audio is available. Signing out or a revoked session ends reconnection attempts; signing out saves the audio on this device.

If your microphone or the meeting's audio stops sending any sound, Flow restarts that source for you and recording continues if it comes back. A recording started while offline is saved on this device and transcribed once you are back online — see Offline meeting recording for recovery.

Keep Flow online for processing. Transcript corrections become available once the recording has ended. Missing or empty audio cannot be recovered. See transcript and summary troubleshooting for uploads blocked by a VPN or slow network.

Copy or share a transcript

Click Copy transcript, or press Cmd+C on Mac or Ctrl+C on Windows with the Transcript tab active, nothing selected and focus outside text fields. The whole transcript copies as Speaker: text lines using displayed labels and translations, excluding markers and deleted lines, as plain text that takes on the styling of wherever you paste it. Unnamed meeting audio copies as Them: …, and numbered microphone voices copy with their number — for example You (Speaker 2): …

To copy part of the conversation, drag across the lines you want — your selection stays intact as you scroll, and only the selection copies. Cmd+A on Mac or Ctrl+A on Windows selects the whole transcript; it does nothing while the chat drawer or a dialog is open, or when focus is in another control.

My thoughts stays private. Shared summaries can still contain transcript-derived content and speaker names.

A shared note's disabled Transcript tab explains whether an invitation or organization policy blocks access; the owner's organization policy applies even to recipients in other organizations, and organizations can disable sharing entirely. On the shared-note website, even recipients with transcript access must open the note in the Wispr Flow desktop app.

Still need help?

If text is still missing after the relevant recovery steps, contact support with your platform, meeting app and the steps you tried.