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 start-note button beside the homepage Notetaker widget’s More menu works the same as New note, but follows your Notepad View setting, so with Keep Notepad hidden selected recording begins without opening the notepad. 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 shortcut action is Join meeting / start Notetaker.

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.

Switching to another meeting

Start notetaker on a reminder, Just record in the shortcut drawer, and the tray action ask you to confirm before replacing a recording that is already running; Flow brings the hub to the front so the “Stop current recording?” question is visible. If the current recording ends another way, that question closes on its own.

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, Join and record cards and switch cards have no countdown, and only the front card can start one.

• 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: on a card that showed a live countdown, click X, press Esc (“Not now”), or choose Join meeting without recording. Declining clears after the meeting signal has been absent for 15 seconds, after four hours, on a different calendar event, or on sign-out.

Leaving the notepad open does not block auto-start: if the notepad is visible but you are not typing in it, Flow saves any unsaved edits and switches it to the new meeting’s note, so your typed notes are preserved and the earlier note can be reopened from the hub. If the new recording cannot start, Flow reopens the previous note without taking focus from what you are doing.

Auto-start can be refused before or after the countdown if the notepad is focused, another recording is in progress, setup, permissions, consent, account access or an organization policy prevents recording, or Flow cannot confirm an eligible ongoing call — including a missing browser meeting tab, a declined call, or a hidden or removed card. 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. Check that recording actually starts rather than relying on the countdown alone.

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; the pill is passive.

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.

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 separately 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 a meeting adds the new segment to that total when you stop again, and the same length appears on your other devices.

Empty new recordings are discarded. Otherwise, an existing summary stays unchanged until Update summary; choosing it replaces any earlier update still in progress, and a resumed segment that captured no new audio simply closes out. For a meeting that never finished sending its recording, stop and resume it: Flow sends the full combined recording — the original plus every resumed segment — and produces a fresh summary. 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.

If processing shows “We hit a snag processing your meeting,” use Retry when offered. “We couldn't process your meeting” can indicate an unrecoverable failure; “The full recording is no longer available to retry” means the saved audio cannot support another attempt.

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 short wait after that speech ends; a separate 30-second maximum bounds an already-pending end-of-call stop, and your own talking after leaving does not extend the wait. Live calls, browser lobbies before joining, reconnecting, dictation and app startup can suppress or delay stopping; protection also applies at the start of a recording, except near its calendar end, and 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; it disappears after four seconds. It is not shown if another notice occupies the space, the recording has already resumed, the meeting was discarded, or “Started by mistake?” applies instead. Anything said during the short stop is still captured. If you click Resume while the stopped recording is still saving, Flow waits for that save to finish and then continues the same meeting, keeping the earlier transcript; extra clicks join the same resume rather than starting a second recording.

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.