Recording a meeting with Notetaker
Last updated: September 26, 2026
Available on: Mac (macOS 13 or later) and Windows
Notetaker records a meeting, shows a live transcript, and produces a summary afterward. Your typed Thoughts notes and the AI Summary are stored separately.
Before you record
Ask for consent: tell participants before you transcribe.
Finish setup: complete Flow onboarding and grant microphone and system audio access. A “Complete setup to start Notetaker” screen means recording has not started — follow its permission and restart instructions, or see Getting started with Notetaker.
Check your access: if you see an access message when starting a recording, follow it or contact your administrator.
In a conference room: when room speakers play the call out loud, Flow removes that echo from your microphone as the recording is finalized, so the refined transcript and speaker labels are not duplicated. The live transcript and other participants’ audio are unchanged; your own speech is kept, apart from up to about 2 seconds immediately before an echo starts.
Start a recording
Meeting | How to start |
On your connected calendar | Open Notetaker, find it under Upcoming or Search, and choose Join and record — or Start if you are already in the call, the event has no conference link, or it clashes with another meeting. |
In-person or unscheduled | Start a new note from the Notetaker hub. |
Keyboard shortcut | Press Option + M on Mac or Alt + M on Windows; change it in Settings. |
Important: Only one meeting records at a time. If the previous meeting is still saving, wait until “Still finishing the last recording” clears.
What the Notetaker shortcut does
Depending on your meetings, it opens a blank recorder, starts the available meeting, shows a meeting picker, or brings an active recording forward.
Where the notepad opens
A note can record behind the Flow Bar pill — click the pill for the notepad and live transcript, and do the same if a reminder opens the recorder behind your meeting app.
If setup is still required, such as system audio access, the notepad opens visible with the setup screen. Complete that screen before continuing; a recorder running in the background may need you to click Turn on to trigger the system audio prompt.
Switching calls while recording
When you switch meetings or start a new note while recording, Flow recognizes the call you have joined rather than the one you left, and asks you to confirm before stopping the current recording if you move to a different conference call in the same browser. To stop instead, choose Quit and discard meeting and confirm.
When Flow moves itself from one call to another in the same browser tab — for example Google Meet to Zoom — recording continues in the new meeting with no “Notetaker stopped” notice. Returning to the original call shortly afterward keeps adding to the same meeting record instead of creating a new one.
While recording
Use the recording pill: it opens the meeting and holds the Stop control, and stays clickable for the whole recording — including when Show Flow Bar at all times is off or you change that setting mid-meeting.
Use Transcript and Thoughts: follow the live transcript or type your own notes.
Answer check-ins: the “Notetaker stopping” prompt after a long silence and the “Still taking notes?” prompt past a calendar event’s end or after an hour appear next to the Flow Bar, and the Stop control stays visible while you decide.
Watch for missing audio: an active recording does not guarantee both sources work — if the microphone fails, Flow may capture only other participants, and a device another app is holding exclusively can’t be captured.
Closing the window does not stop recording: reopen the meeting from the recording pill or the Notetaker hub and your transcript and notes are still there.
Dictate while recording: Flow keeps the meeting open and resumes capture automatically after dictation.
Stop recording and review
Pause briefly after your last words, then click Stop Notetaker in the recording pill or meeting window — this avoids cutting off your ending.
Wait for audio saving to finish. Start and Resume can be temporarily disabled during this step.
Open the meeting’s Summary and Transcript tabs. Processing commonly takes 2–5 minutes.
After the meeting ends, the “Notetaker stopped” message with Resume and the “Started by mistake?” message are clickable, and the recording pill stays clickable for your next recording, even when Show Flow Bar at all times is off.
When Flow stops on its own
Flow can stop when it detects the call ended; control this in Settings → Notetaker. Recordings finish shortly after you leave, once Flow has seen a few seconds of silence. If Flow is not sure the call ended — for example, a drop early in a meeting — it asks first with a Stop / Keep recording prompt. If it stops early, use Resume when available; anything said during the short stop is still captured and saved. Choosing Keep going on a check-in dismisses that prompt only; it does not turn off future automatic stops.
Recording continues through ongoing speech, a reconnect, Keep recording or Resume, switching meetings, a displayed warning, rejoining, a muted or reconnecting microphone, dictation, and the first moments of a recording. Flow does not stop while you are in a live call or waiting in a lobby; rejoining after an automatic stop shows the “Notetaker stopped” notice with Resume once.
Note: For Google Meet on Mac, automatic call-end detection from browser tabs or windows requires Chrome, Arc, or Dia plus Accessibility permission. Safari and Firefox do not trigger it, so check whether Flow is still recording when your call ends and stop it manually.
Zoom on Mac
Clicking Leave in the meeting toolbar, or confirming Leave Meeting, End Meeting for All, Leave Webinar, End Webinar for All, or a host’s Assign and leave, ends the recording about 2 seconds later. Flow recognizes these buttons in Zoom’s English interface and in 14 or more other languages, including German, Russian, Spanish, French, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, and Swedish. Cancelling the leave confirmation, leaving and rejoining quickly, leaving a breakout room, or a host using End in the toolbar keeps the recording going.
Microsoft Teams
The hang-up button ends the recording; a generic Teams button labelled Leave does not. Teams detection works with the English interface.
Browser meetings on Mac
Flow ends promptly after you leave, keeping the recording only when someone is still speaking within about 5 seconds of the call dropping. In Google Meet, once Flow has seen you click Leave, the recording ends about 2 seconds after the call audio stops, and Flow recognizes the post-call screen in any interface language. Automatic stopping works with many browser windows open and stays focused on your meeting’s window; if Flow cannot read your open windows clearly, it keeps recording rather than assuming the meeting ended.
Recording length and interruptions
A recording has a maximum length that counts all recorded segments in the meeting, so stopping and resuming does not reset it. Before the limit, a countdown offers a longer duration when available — extend before the deadline or end the recording. Ignoring or dismissing the warning still stops the recording at the limit, even with automatic end-of-call stopping off. Mac sleep does not postpone the limit: if the recording is already past it when the Mac wakes, Flow ends the recording shortly afterward and dates its end to the moment the Mac went to sleep.
Connection lost: Flow can keep recording locally while reconnecting. If live transcription cannot start, choose Record offline when offered. Processing resumes when the connection returns, provided the audio was retained and your account permits processing, so a summary usually appears within seconds of reconnecting. See Offline meeting recording.
Mac sleep: capture ends the moment the Mac goes to sleep, so nothing is captured while it sleeps and the saved audio and transcript match the recording’s end time. On wake, Flow finalizes the recording automatically and the notification offers Resume into the same meeting.
Storage full: offline recording stops. A live-transcribed meeting can continue, but the later audio-refinement pass is unavailable and transcript saving can fail. Free up storage.
Resume a meeting
Open the meeting from the hub and click Resume to append another recorded segment. Resume requires usable original audio and remaining recording time; if it is unavailable, start a new meeting. Automatic stopping remains active after resuming.
Warning: An existing summary is preserved until you choose to update it — save any manual edits you want to keep before updating. Your Thoughts notes are not rewritten by summary generation.
Short or failed recordings
If recording failed, read the recovery card to see whether audio was saved — not every failed attempt is recoverable. If the card says audio was saved on this device, reconnect and allow processing to resume. If several meetings are waiting, Flow works through them one after another so they all complete.
Warning: Discard deletes the failed meeting and its audio. Try again starts a fresh recording.
Still stuck?
For permission errors, missing audio, failed starts, or unavailable Resume, see Troubleshooting Notetaker recording and audio.