Start one yourself
Press your Meeting Mode Hotkey. That opens meeting mode and begins a note straight away — useful when the prompt didn’t appear, or when you’re recording something that isn’t a call at all, like a lecture or an interview. To set or change that shortcut, open Settings, then Hotkeys under App, and look for Meeting Mode Hotkey. The same panel has a When triggered by hotkey, open in: choice — Full width or Side panel — which decides how the meeting view appears when you use the shortcut. Creating a note does the same thing: every new note starts recording as soon as it’s created, so New note in the sidebar is the quickest way to begin. If you only wanted to type, stop it from the record control in the note’s header.Start one from the prompt
When OpenWhispr thinks a meeting has started, a card appears asking whether you want to take notes. Choose Take notes and recording begins. If the prompt came from a calendar event with a meeting link, the button reads Join & transcribe instead — that opens the meeting and starts the note in one go. The card is drawn by OpenWhispr rather than your operating system, so it still reaches you when Do Not Disturb or Focus is on. It’s also excluded from screen capture, so it won’t show up in a share or a recording. How meeting detection decides covers what triggers that prompt and how to turn it off.While it’s recording
Text appears as people speak on the Transcript tab, which shows a small wave while audio is coming in; the note opens on Your notes, so you can type alongside the call and switch over whenever you want to read along. The record control in the note’s header becomes a pill with a stop button, a live waveform and a timer. If OpenWhispr is still waiting on your microphone it says so — Waiting for microphone — rather than failing quietly. Speaker labels are assigned live and tidied up once the call ends, so don’t worry if they look rough mid-meeting. The app tells you as much: “Still identifying speakers. Labeling accuracy will improve once the call ends.” See speaker labels.Recording your own microphone is not the same as recording the people on the
call. Capturing the other side needs a system-audio permission, and on some
setups it needs a bit more than that — see
capturing both sides of the call.
Where the note ends up
Meeting notes are saved into your Meetings folder automatically. If the prompt came from a calendar event, the note takes that event’s title; otherwise it starts as Untitled Note and you can rename it. When the recording stops — whether you stopped it or the call ended on its own — the note offers Generate AI Summary. That runs the built-in Detailed Notes action: a short summary, the discussion by topic, decisions, action items with owners and due dates, and open questions, keeping every name, number and date from the call. The result lands on the note’s AI Summary tab, which is where the note opens from then on. The ask bar underneath defaults to Draft a follow-up email; Generate Notes and any actions you’ve made yourself are in its menu. From there it behaves like any other note — editable, searchable, and available to every AI action.Choosing how meetings get transcribed
Meeting recording keeps its own engine setting, separate from dictation. Open Settings, then Speech-to-Text under AI Models, and pick the Note Recording tab. Four options:
Changing this tab changes meetings only. Your dictation engine and your audio
upload engine are set on their own tabs and are unaffected.