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A meeting recording has two halves: your voice, from your microphone, and everyone else’s, from what your computer is playing. They’re captured by different means and they can fail independently — which is why a recording sometimes contains only you.

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What OpenWhispr captures

Your microphone, and system audio — the sound your computer plays. Together those cover both sides of a call. What it does not do:
  • It never joins the meeting as a bot. Nobody sees an extra participant, and there’s nothing for a host to admit.
  • It never records your screen, on any platform. On macOS the permission is labelled for screen recording because macOS governs both with one control, but only the audio is taken.
  • It doesn’t need the meeting platform’s own recording to be running, and it doesn’t ask the host for permission.

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The permission it needs

System audio is permissioned separately from your microphone: Granting it on macOS also requires restarting OpenWhispr — macOS applies the permission at launch, and skipping the restart is the single most common reason this doesn’t work. The step-by-step for each platform, including what to do when it fails, is in meeting audio isn’t captured.

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Echo, and why you don’t hear yourself twice

Your microphone picks up your speakers as well as your voice, so a naive recording captures everyone else twice — once from system audio, once bleeding back through your mic. OpenWhispr runs echo cancellation to remove that bleed, and drops duplicated phrases when merging the two sources. You don’t need to configure this. It’s worth knowing because it explains why a transcript doesn’t repeat every sentence, and why using headphones — which removes the bleed at source — tends to give the cleanest result.

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Recording only your own side

If system audio isn’t available, recording still works; you just get your half. That’s a legitimate way to work if you only need your own contributions, and speaker labels will fall back to “You” and “Them”.
Check before you rely on it. If a recording matters, start one, say a few words, have someone else say a few, and stop. Ten seconds tells you whether both sides are landing — and there is one known case, Microsoft Teams on Windows, where the other side can come through silent without any error. That case is documented in meeting audio isn’t captured.

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Telling people you’re recording

Recording laws vary by country and state, and some require the consent of everyone on the call rather than just you. OpenWhispr doesn’t announce itself to other participants, so whether and how to tell them is your call to make.