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Your meeting recording contains your side of the conversation and nothing else, or the transcript is empty. Capturing other people means capturing system audio — what your computer is playing — which is a separate thing from your microphone, with its own permission on macOS and its own machinery on every platform.
OpenWhispr records what your computer plays. It never joins the meeting as a bot, and on macOS it never records your screen.

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macOS

macOS gates system audio behind the same permission it uses for screen recording, so the name you see in System Settings isn’t the name the app uses.
1

Grant System Audio in the app

Settings → Privacy & Data under System → Permissions. If System Audio hasn’t been granted yet, its card has a Grant Access button that takes you to the right place. If the card is green with a checkmark and shows no button, it’s already granted — skip to the next step.
2

Enable OpenWhispr in System Settings

You’ll land on Privacy & Security → Screen Recording — on recent macOS versions it’s labelled Screen & System Audio Recording. That’s the correct pane even though you’re not recording your screen; macOS controls both with one permission.
3

Restart OpenWhispr

macOS only applies this permission to a fresh launch. If you granted it while the app was running, quit and reopen it — this is the step most often missed.

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Windows

System audio is captured by a bundled helper, windows-system-audio-helper.exe, which needs no permission prompt and hears every application on every output device. It requires Windows 10 version 2004 or later. If the helper is missing or fails to start, OpenWhispr falls back to capturing through Chromium, which only hears your default output device. So:
  • If you can hear the meeting but OpenWhispr can’t, check that the meeting application is playing through your default output device — not a headset you’ve selected only inside that app.
  • If you see “System audio capture failed. Continuing with microphone only”, system audio capture failed entirely. Your microphone is still being recorded; everyone else isn’t.
  • Check your antivirus hasn’t quarantined the helper — see Antivirus blocks OpenWhispr.
Microsoft Teams on Windows has been reported as an exception in some setups. In affected cases the Teams app renders audio in a way our system-audio capture doesn’t see, so a Teams meeting can record silence for the other participants without reporting an error. This doesn’t match how the Windows capture path is designed to work (it’s meant to hear every application), so treat it as an open, unconfirmed issue rather than a fixed limitation. Check a short test recording before relying on a Teams meeting, and tell us your Teams and Windows versions if you hit this — that’s what we need to pin it down.

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Linux

System audio is captured through PipeWire, directly from the default sink monitor. There’s no screen-share chooser and you shouldn’t expect one.
1

Install PipeWire if it isn't already there

  • Debian and Ubuntu: sudo apt install pipewire libpipewire-0.3-0
  • Fedora and RHEL: sudo dnf install pipewire pipewire-libs
  • Arch: sudo pacman -S pipewire
2

Make sure the PipeWire user service is running

For the current session. Sign out and back in after installing or updating the packages.
3

Restart OpenWhispr and start recording again

Confirm the meeting audio is playing through the default sink.

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If recording never starts at all

That’s meeting detection rather than audio capture:
  • Check Meeting detection is enabled — Settings → Preferences under App, in the Notifications group.
  • Keep talking for a few seconds. The prompt is triggered by sustained microphone activity, not by having a meeting app open, so a very short exchange may not reach it.
  • Connect Google Calendar in Integrations if you want calendar-driven detection. A scheduled event doesn’t depend on hearing anything, which makes it the most reliable trigger.
  • You can always start recording by hand with the Meeting Mode Hotkey, or from the in-app meeting prompt — an always-on-top card that works with Do Not Disturb on and never appears in screen shares.

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FAQ

Because macOS has no separate system-audio permission — capturing audio your computer plays is governed by the screen-recording permission. OpenWhispr doesn’t capture your screen; it only takes the audio.
Depends on where you and they are — recording laws vary and some jurisdictions require everyone’s consent. Worth knowing before you rely on it.
On Windows, the fallback capture path only hears your default output device. On macOS, the permission is almost always the answer. Both are covered above.
Yes — that’s what you get when system audio isn’t available, and it’s a valid way to work if you only need your own side.