Recording a meeting with Notetaker

Notetaker records a meeting, shows a live transcript, and produces a summary afterward. Follow the conversation in the notepad and type your own notes.

Before you record

1. Ask participants for consent before transcribing.

2. Complete Flow onboarding before starting a recording.

“Complete setup to start Notetaker” means recording has not started. If “Notetaker isn't recording yet” appears, choose Finish Setup to continue or Close Notetaker to leave without recording. Revoking microphone or system-audio access can reopen setup while the meeting is idle, not during recording or on a read-only shared note. See Getting started with Notetaker for setup help.

Start a recording

1. Open the Notetaker hub.

2. Click New note for an in-person or unscheduled meeting.

The notepad opens and recording starts once setup and access requirements are satisfied. For a scheduled meeting, choose Join and record on its row in Notetaker’s upcoming list; choose Start instead if you are already in the call, the event has no conference link, or it clashes with another meeting. The ⌘N / Ctrl+N shortcut works on the Notetaker tab; to customize the optional shortcut, stop recording first, then open Settings → Notetaker → Keyboard shortcut → Change shortcut (the action is Join meeting / start Notetaker).

Starting from a reminder’s Start notetaker, Just record in the shortcut drawer, or the tray asks you to confirm “Stop current recording?” before replacing a recording already running.

Choose how the notepad opens

Open Settings → Notetaker → Notepad View and pick one option:

• Keep Notepad hidden: recording starts without opening the notepad.

• Open Notepad: the notepad opens when Notetaker starts.

• Open side by side: the meeting sits on the left and the notepad on the right when you join.

Start Notetaker automatically

Auto-start is off by default, applies separately to each computer, and is available only when the setting is shown; some Mac and Windows users will not see it.

1. Open Settings → Notetaker → Meeting detection.

2. Enable Automatically detect any call.

3. Enable Start Notetaker automatically, directly below it.

With detection off, auto-start is disabled and reads “Turn on “Automatically detect any call” to use this”; your choice is retained if detection is off or the setting disappears.

An eligible “Meeting detected” card starts recording after a countdown — 10 seconds by default, ranging from 5 to 60 seconds. Scheduled reminders and Join and record cards have no countdown, and only the front card can start one. Slack huddles count as eligible calls, in the Slack desktop app on Mac and Windows and in a browser.

• Start now: click Start Notetaker to bypass the countdown.

• Pause: hover, hide or drag the card; the countdown resumes from its remaining time, and a paused countdown left hidden is eventually cancelled.

• Cancel: open the caret menu beside the button, or choose Snooze for 2 min; that card then requires a manual start.

• Decline this call: click X, press Esc (“Not now”), or join the meeting without Notetaker. No “Meeting detected” card appears again for the rest of that call; rejoining later shows the card again.

Auto-start can be refused before or after the countdown if you are actively working in the notepad, another recording is in progress, setup, permissions, consent, account access or an organization policy prevents recording, or Flow cannot confirm an eligible ongoing call. A notepad left open behind your meeting window does not block it. Sleep, screen lock, switching Mac users, quitting Flow, losing the meeting signal, a system-clock change, a delayed start, or changed settings or access cancels the countdown, so check that recording actually starts.

If the notepad is open but you are not typing in it, Flow saves your unsaved edits and switches it to the new meeting’s note; the earlier note reopens from the hub.

While recording

Closing the notepad does not stop recording. Click the Flow Bar’s recording pill, or reopen the active meeting from the hub, to return to the same transcript and notes; when the notepad is in front, use its in-window recording control.

Follow Transcript or write in My thoughts. Your typed notes are separate from the AI Summary, are not rewritten by summary generation, and are excluded when you share the note.

Show live transcript is in Settings → Notetaker. Turning it off during a meeting hides the transcript tab without stopping transcription already underway. Turning it on cannot add live transcription to a meeting that started without it; it becomes available in your next meeting.

If a source stops sending audio

If your microphone or system audio stops delivering sound, Flow restarts that source on its own and recording continues once audio returns. If audio still doesn’t come back after about half a minute, a card appears next to the Flow Bar: “Notetaker isn't getting any audio.” Click Restart Flow to recover, or Dismiss to clear it. The card stays until audio returns, the meeting ends, or you dismiss it.

On Windows, if capture of other participants’ audio fails mid-meeting, Flow restarts it for you and fills the gap with silence so the recording and transcript timings stay in step. If the restarts run out, “System audio capture stopped” appears.

Stop recording and review

1. Click Stop Notetaker in the recording pill or meeting window; capture ends immediately, even mid-sentence.

2. Wait for audio saving to finish. Start and Resume can be unavailable during this step, for up to 15 seconds, and Stop is unavailable during wrap-up.

3. Open the meeting’s Summary and Transcript tabs. Past recordings are listed under Past notes.

Summary processing continues after wrap-up. Flow saves the words captured up to your Stop click above the pause divider, even if you quit immediately afterward. The meeting length shown on the transcript bar and in the summary is the time actually recorded, excluding paused time; resuming adds the new segment when you stop again.

How summaries are generated

Empty new recordings are discarded. If a meeting you resumed already had an unedited summary, Flow processes the whole recording on its own once the resumed segment added meaningful new audio — at least 20% more, or five new minutes — and a complete transcript and summary replace the earlier partial ones when ready; the earlier summary stays on screen meanwhile. If you edited the summary, it is kept and updating stays your choice: click Update summary, which warns that updating replaces your edits and replaces any update still in progress. Meetings summarized before this change still need the manual click.

Without an existing summary, meetings with five minutes or less of total recorded audio — including earlier segments — or meetings stopped by switching Mac users wait for Generate summary or the 24-hour automatic processing backstop. Other meetings process after stopping when connectivity and account access permit.

Every meeting reaches a result. A very short or silent recording finishes with “Transcript too short to meaningfully summarize” or “No meaningful audio recorded” in place of a summary, and a meeting that already has a summary keeps it even if processed again with little or no new audio. If processing shows “We hit a snag processing your meeting,” use Retry when offered. “We couldn't process your meeting” means no further attempt will run; “The full recording is no longer available to retry” means the saved audio cannot support another attempt.

If the upload doesn’t finish

Your recording is saved either way, and the meeting card and Summary tab explain what is holding the upload up. Retry nudges the upload already in progress, so a meeting is never uploaded twice.

• Waiting for a connection: your computer is offline. The meeting uploads on its own once you reconnect.

• “Can't reach our servers to upload this meeting.”: something on your network is blocking the upload. If you’re on a VPN or work network, turn it off or switch networks, then click Retry.

• “Your connection is too slow to upload this meeting.”: Flow keeps trying on its own, and you can click Retry once you’re on a faster network.

When Flow stops on its own

Settings → Notetaker → Stop Notetaker when a call ends controls end-of-call stopping. Recordings finish shortly after you leave, once Flow has seen a few seconds of silence; other participants’ speech can add a wait of up to 30 seconds. Live calls, browser lobbies before joining, reconnecting, dictation and app startup can suppress or delay stopping, which never removes the recording-length limit.

Prompts appear next to the Flow Bar, with Stop available while you decide:

The silence warning follows ten continuous minutes without transcribed speech while capture and transcription are working. “Still taking notes” check-ins occur once 10 minutes past the calendar end and once after an hour of recording, when enabled. Keep going or Keep recording answers only that prompt; later automatic stops remain active. Hovering “Notetaker stopping” pauses its countdown rather than cancelling it.

After an automatic — not manual — stop, “Notetaker stopped” can offer Resume, and anything said during the short stop is still captured. If the stopped recording is still saving, Flow waits for that save and then continues the same meeting, keeping the earlier transcript. If Flow offers to stop opening the notepad automatically, accepting sets Notepad View to Keep Notepad hidden; Undo restores your previous option.

Maximum recording length

Choose Settings → Notetaker → Maximum recording length: 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours or 3 hours; the default is 2 hours. The longest option stops at approximately 2 hours 58 minutes. All recorded segments count, so stopping and resuming does not reset the limit.

The warning appears five minutes before limits of an hour or more, or two minutes before the 30-minute limit. Choose a longer duration before the deadline when offered, or End recording. At the longest setting, “Transcription will end soon” offers no extension. Dismissing or ignoring the warning does not prevent stopping, even with end-of-call stopping off.

Connection, sleep and storage interruptions

Resume or recover a meeting

Resume requires readable original audio within its retention window, an undeleted transcript and remaining recording time. Missing, empty, expired or unreadable audio prevents it — even if a Resume button appeared earlier. A deleted or unloadable meeting can also be refused, and setup and account restrictions still apply.

1. Open the saved meeting from the Notetaker hub.

2. Click Resume to append another recorded segment.

If the last recording is still saving, Resume waits for it and then continues; if another meeting is already recording, Resume is refused and that recording keeps going. If recovery is unavailable, choose Record as new meeting when offered. Automatic stopping remains active after Resume, although Flow temporarily limits repeated early stops, and automatic recovery attempts are not unlimited.

For “Couldn't start recording,” read whether the card says “We couldn't capture any audio, so nothing was saved.” or “We couldn't start live transcription. Your audio was saved on this device.” If the card says audio was saved on this device, reconnect and allow processing to resume. Try again starts a fresh recording.

Still stuck?

For permission errors, missing audio, failed starts, or unavailable Resume, see Troubleshooting Notetaker recording and audio. When contacting support, include your platform, meeting app, exact message and what you tried.