Meeting notes without a bot in the call

Many AI note takers work by sending a bot into your meeting. It joins like a person, shows up in the participant list with a name such as “Notetaker”, and records everything from inside the call. It works, but a lot of people have stopped liking it.

This page explains what goes wrong with meeting bots, how recording without one works, and how Hearkeeper keeps everyone informed even though nobody new joins the call.

Why people want meeting notes without a bot

The complaints about meeting bots tend to be the same few:

• It changes the room. A silent extra participant with a product name makes a call feel less like a conversation. Clients and candidates notice it, and some ask for it to be removed.
• It needs someone’s permission to get in. Bots often wait in the lobby, get rejected by hosts, or are blocked by company policy for external meetings. Your notes then depend on someone else’s settings.
• It arrives uninvited. Some bots join every meeting on a calendar automatically, including meetings where recording was never discussed.
• It sends the audio somewhere. A bot records on the vendor’s servers by design. The recording and transcript live in someone else’s cloud before you have looked at them.
• It only works where a bot can join. Phone calls, a meeting in the room, a lecture, or an app the bot does not support are out of reach.

None of this means bots are always wrong. For a team that wants every call recorded centrally, a bot is a reasonable design. But if you want notes for yourself, from your own computer, a bot is more than you need.

How recording without a bot works

A meeting on your computer is already two audio streams passing through your machine: your microphone (what you say) and your computer’s audio output (what everyone else says, played through your speakers or headphones).

A bot-free recorder captures both of those streams on your own device and mixes them. That is the whole trick. Nothing is added to the call, the call app does not need to know, and the other participants do not have to install anything.

On a Mac, capturing the computer’s audio used to mean installing a virtual audio driver. Recent versions of macOS have system-level ways for an app to capture audio output directly, with a permission prompt from the system. We cover the details, including the manual route with a free driver, in the guide on how to record system audio on a Mac.

Because the capture happens on your device, it also works for things a bot can never join: a meeting in the room, a lecture, a phone call on speaker next to your laptop.

Several tools are bot-free now

Bot-free recording is no longer rare, and it would be wrong to pretend otherwise. As of September 2026, going by each vendor’s own site:

• Granola captures device audio instead of joining the call. Transcription happens in the cloud.
• Jamie runs on your device without a bot. Processing happens in its cloud, which it hosts in Europe.
• MacWhisper records call apps in the background on a Mac and transcribes with local Whisper models. It is a transcription tool rather than a meeting notes app.
• Otter is known mostly for its meeting bot, but its desktop app can also record without one.

So “no bot” on its own is not a reason to pick any particular app. The questions that matter are where the audio is processed and how the other people in the call find out.

What Hearkeeper does differently

Hearkeeper is a Mac app (not released yet) that records your microphone and your computer’s audio directly on the Mac. It works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack huddles, Webex and FaceTime, and with meetings and lectures in the room. Two things set it apart.

The processing stays on your Mac

Transcription, summaries and search all run on the computer you are recording on:

• Live captions appear with about 2–4 seconds of delay while the meeting runs.
• After the call, a more accurate final pass (Whisper large-v3 turbo, accelerated with Metal) adds speaker separation.
• A local language model writes the summary, decisions and to-dos. No API key is needed.
• Every line links to the second it was said, so you can check it against the recording.

Nothing is uploaded unless you choose to connect a team server or your own API key. The page on local AI meeting notes explains what that means in practice.

Bot-free, but never hidden

A bot has one honest side effect: everyone can see it in the participant list. When you remove the bot, you remove that signal, and it becomes easy to record people who do not know. We think that is the real problem with bot-free recording, and Hearkeeper is designed around it.

• A consent step before every recording. Before recording starts, you tell the room. You can read a short notice aloud, post it in the meeting chat, or both.
• A consent receipt. A record of who was told, how and when is saved with the recording, so you can show it later if anyone asks.
• A pill that cannot be hidden. While Hearkeeper records, a recording pill stays on screen. It shows up in screenshots and in screen shares, so if you present, the others see it too. There is no setting to hide it, by design.

These choices are deliberate limits. Hearkeeper will not offer an “invisible” mode, and it will not start recording without the consent step.

Is it legal to record a meeting without a bot?

A bot does not make a recording legal, and the absence of one does not make it illegal. What matters is the law where you and the other participants are, your workplace’s rules, and whether people were told. In many places, telling everyone and giving them a chance to object is the expected minimum.

We cover this in more detail in the guide on recording meetings with consent. It is general information, not legal advice.

A simple routine for bot-free notes

Whatever tool you use, this routine keeps things clear:

1. Say it at the start. “I’m recording this on my laptop for notes; is everyone fine with that?”
2. Put it in the chat for anyone who joins late.
3. Stop if someone objects, or turn it off for the part they are uncomfortable with.
4. Keep the recording to yourself unless everyone agreed to wider sharing.
5. Delete what you no longer need.

Hearkeeper builds the first two steps into the recording flow and keeps a receipt of them, so the routine is the default rather than something to remember.

Join the waitlist

Hearkeeper is coming to the Mac first (macOS 14.2 or later). If you want bot-free meeting notes that stay on your computer, join the waitlist and we will email you when there is a build for you.