Meetings
How meeting capture works
Sloth records your microphone and your Mac's system audio, so it hears both sides of any call without joining it. It reminds you before calendar meetings, spots calls as they start, and opens your notes when the meeting ends.
Two audio sources, no bot
During a meeting Sloth captures two streams at once:
- Your microphone, for what you say.
- System audio, for what everyone else says through your speakers or headphones.
Because it listens on your Mac, it works with Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Slack, FaceTime or any other call app. Nobody on the call sees a bot join. It's still your job to tell people you're taking notes where that's expected or required.
You can choose the microphone in Settings › Meetings › Transcription › Microphone. The choice only affects Sloth.
How Sloth spots a meeting
Calendar reminders
Sloth reads the calendars already connected to your Mac (including Google accounts added in macOS System Settings › Internet Accounts). For calendar meetings with a join link, it shows a reminder 5 minutes and 1 minute before the start by default. Change this in Settings › Meetings › Meeting notifications › Reminder timing: at start time, 1, 3 or 5 minutes before, or 5 and 1 minutes before.
Under Calendars in the same pane you can untick a calendar to hide its meetings and notifications.
Call detection
With Auto-detected meetings on, Sloth shows a pop-up when it sees a call start from browser, camera, microphone or app audio activity. You can mute detection for specific apps.
The meeting pop-up
The pop-up appears in the top-right corner of your screen.
| Kind | Title | Subtitle | Look |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calendar meeting | The meeting's title | “Starts in 5 min”, “Starts in 1 min” or “Starting now” | Solid yellow bar on the left |
| Detected call | “Meeting detected” | The app or meeting name | Dashed border |
Click Take notes to start transcribing and open that meeting's note in the main window. The join options (Join & Transcribe, Join Only) sit in the button's menu. Hovering over the pop-up stops it from closing.
Auto-record calendar meetings in Settings › Meetings › Recording starts calendar meetings without asking. It's off by default.
Starting and stopping
You can start a meeting from:
- the pop-up's Take notes button;
- Start now next to a meeting in Coming up, which appears within 5 minutes of the start;
- New note at the top right of the main window, or ⌘N;
- a global shortcut. Meeting Recording in Settings › Shortcuts toggles recording with ⌘⇧R. It's off until you turn it on.
While you're recording
Floating indicator
A small indicator sits on the right edge of your screen. Drag it anywhere; Sloth remembers the position.
| State | What you see |
|---|---|
| Idle | A small, faint glass square. Hover to see your dictation shortcut. |
| Recording | A bright yellow pill with a live waveform and black controls. |
| Transcribing | The yellow pill reads “Transcribing…”, then shrinks back to idle. |
While a meeting records:
- Click the control at the left of the pill to pause or resume.
- Click elsewhere on the pill to stop.
- Option-click or right-click to discard the recording. Sloth asks first.
- Hover to see the recent transcript, if Show transcript on hover is on (it is by default).
Recording pill in the title bar
The main window shows a dark pill at the top centre with the meeting's title and yellow level bars. Click the title to open the note. Click × to stop recording.
Move notes beside the call
With Move notes beside the call when a meeting starts on (the default), Sloth moves the main window to the right-hand side of the screen your call is on, about 440 points wide and full height, so you can type notes next to the call. It skips this in full screen and won't move the window again once you reposition it during that meeting.
When the meeting ends
Stopping by itself
Sloth stops a recording on its own when one of these holds, however the recording was started:
- The call ended. The call app lets go of the microphone or goes away — including a Google Meet tab left open on “You left the meeting”.
- The meeting's time is up and the call is quiet. The calendar event has ended and nobody has spoken on the call audio for 5 minutes. Voices in the room don't count.
- Nobody has spoken for 15 minutes, when there is no call audio to go on.
- Nobody has spoken for 5 minutes on either the call audio or the microphone.
Before stopping, “Still recording? Stopping in 30s” appears. Click Keep recording (or close the card) and Sloth won't ask for that reason again for 15 minutes. If nobody answers, the recording stops and is saved and summarised as usual, and Resume picks it up again.
After you stop
- Sloth finishes the transcript on your Mac and labels the speakers. See Transcription and speaker labels.
- Your summary provider writes the notes. See Notes and summaries.
- The note opens in the main window, if Open notes when a meeting ends is on (the default). Sloth skips this while another meeting is recording or you're dictating, and shows a “Transcription complete” pop-up instead.
- The notes and transcript are written to your Sloth folder. See Your notes are plain files.