How do I record a meeting?

Goal

Let Nova record a conversation in the room. Nova turns it into a transcript and, if you want, into notes.

Before you start

• A target folder: Settings, Meetings & minutes, the Folders & templates tab, card Locations, field Target folder for transcripts & notes. If it is empty, Nova uses the Markdown folder. The page shows only in Expert view, see How do I switch between Simple and Expert?
• Speech recognition through AI access or on this Mac.
• The microphone is allowed. See Which macOS permissions does Nova need?

Steps

1. In the menu bar, Meetings, Start recording. A window titled Nova is listening in asks whether everyone in the room is okay with it. Only Start records. Cancel records nothing.
2. Or ask Nova at the avatar to record the meeting. The card Record meeting asks the same. Start records, No does not.
3. Or in the menu bar, Meetings, Open dashboard, then New meeting. The question comes first here too.
4. While recording, the chip Nova is listening in sits at the avatar, with the elapsed time. Nova writes the transcript in pieces of two minutes. Each piece goes to the speech recognition you set up.
5. Type your own notes into the field in the chip. Enter saves them with the time, /z adds a timestamp.
6. Stop in the chip, or Stop recording in the menu bar, ends it. The transcript is in the target folder and in the meeting dashboard. If Create notes automatically after the transcript is on in the Pipeline tab, the notes follow right away. Otherwise use Create minutes in the dashboard.
7. Dismiss in the chip ends the recording without notes.
8. Teams and Zoom: in the Pipeline tab, Record Teams calls automatically and Record Zoom calls automatically record a call on their own. You agree once when you turn it on. For the call audio Nova needs the Screen Recording permission.
9. Live captions: in Settings under Meetings & minutes, card Live captions, turn on Unlock live captions for meetings. Under Recognition for captions, pick the local Whisper server, Parakeet on the Neural Engine, or OpenAI. Parakeet downloads its model (about 470 MB) once, when you click Download model. During a recording, a floating window shows what is said: the microphone as Me, the call audio as Others. Show or hide it with Meetings, Live captions on/off in the menu bar. With OpenAI, Nova asks once per meeting before any audio goes out. The captions are not saved.
10. AI hints: in the same card, under AI hints, turn on Explain terms and people (off by default). Nova then shows a short card under the captions about technical terms and publicly known people. It fades after 8 seconds, or stays if you pin it. Use the hold key to see all hints. The minutes get a section for them.

Example

Meetings, Start recording, Start. Say two sentences, type a note in the chip and press Enter, then Stop.

Common problems

• Without a target folder and without a Markdown folder nothing starts. Nova says the meeting folder is missing.
• Shorter than 30 seconds and without a note of your own, Nova discards the recording. A longer recording without spoken words and without a note goes to the trash in the dashboard, without notes.
• After 10 minutes with nothing usable, the card Check recording asks. Without Continue the recording ends after 5 minutes.
• With Privacy Lock, recording starts only with speech recognition on this Mac. While a call is running, room recording does not start.
• A file that is already recorded goes through the audio inbox. See How do I turn a recording into notes? You pick the template for the notes in How do I choose a template for meeting minutes?