meeting recorder without a bot

why people stopped inviting bots to meetings

Recording bots create a social problem before they create a technical one: a participant named "Otter.ai Notetaker" changes how people talk. External guests ask what it is, legal asks who approved it, and some hosts simply kick it out. IT departments increasingly block bot domains outright, and clients on regulated teams often can't allow an unknown participant that ships audio to a third party.

The platforms are now formalizing that rejection: Microsoft Teams begins automatically blocking external notetaker bots in August 2026, which threatens to lock bot-based recorders out of Teams calls entirely. The legal system is catching up too — Otter faces a consolidated federal class action over non-consent recording and voiceprints, Fireflies faces two BIPA voiceprint suits, and Fireflies users report bots that kept joining meetings even after they deleted their accounts. An architecture where nothing joins the call has none of these failure modes.

Bot-free recorders solved the visibility problem — but most of them kept the data problem. Granola captures audio locally and then routes it to Deepgram or AssemblyAI for transcription, sends transcripts to OpenAI and Anthropic, and trains on user data by default; Fathom processes your meetings in its cloud. The bot is gone, the upload is not.

how now recording stays out of your call

There is no integration, no calendar access, and no participant — the recorder runs in a browser tab (or the iOS app) on your machine and captures the audio you already hear and speak. Transcription runs on your device too: Whisper runs right in the browser via WebAssembly, ready in about two seconds on any current Chrome or Edge — including locked-down managed work profiles — with no GPU needed, so the transcript exists before any network request could ever be involved.

The same no-bot logic covers meetings that already happened: drop any recording — MP3, M4A, WAV, OGG, or the audio of an MP4 — onto the recorder page and it's transcribed on-device with timestamps, free and unlimited, and the file never uploads. It becomes a full meeting with speaker labels, talk-time stats, a summary, and exports. (Otter's free plan allows 3 file imports for the lifetime of the account; Fathom offers no file upload at all.)

• Open nowrecording.com in Chrome or Edge — no install, no account
• Pick your microphone (and optionally tab/system audio for remote calls) — or drop in an existing recording
• Speak — the transcript streams live, on-device, in 29 languages
• Stop — get speaker labels and talk-time stats, an AI summary whose action items cite the exact transcript turns, and one-click exports: Markdown, plain text, .srt/.vtt subtitles, JSON, or the original audio

the difference you can verify

Every recorder claims to care about privacy; ours is the only claim you can check in 10 seconds. Open your browser's DevTools, switch to the Network tab, and record a meeting: you will see the speech model download to your device once — and zero audio uploads, ever. The only thing that can leave your device is text, and only when you ask for it: an AI summary (transcript text goes to an LLM) or cloud sync when you sign in (meeting text, never audio).

We also put the comparison in writing: nowrecording.com/trust lays out exactly what leaves your device versus each competitor, with sources, and nowrecording.com/your-data documents the pledge that your data outlives your subscription — every meeting exports in full, from any meeting page, in one click.

frequently asked questions

Does anything appear in the participant list when I record?

No. now recording never joins the meeting — it records locally on your device, so there is no bot, no guest, and nothing visible to other participants.

Which meeting apps does it work with?

All of them — Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Slack huddles, phone calls on speaker, and fully in-person meetings. Because it captures audio locally instead of integrating with the meeting platform, there is nothing to connect or authorize.

What happens when Microsoft Teams starts blocking notetaker bots?

Nothing changes for now recording. Teams begins automatically blocking external bots in August 2026, which shuts bot-based recorders out of Teams calls — but since now recording never joins the meeting, there is nothing for Teams to block.

Can it transcribe a recording I already have?

Yes — drop an MP3, M4A, WAV, OGG, or MP4 (audio) file onto the recorder page and it's transcribed on-device with timestamps, free and unlimited; the file never uploads. For comparison, Otter's free plan caps file imports at 3 for the lifetime of the account, and Fathom offers no file upload.

Do I still need consent to record without a bot?

Yes. Recording laws apply regardless of the tool — many places require everyone on the call to consent. A bot-free recorder removes the awkward participant, not your legal responsibility to inform people where required. now recording makes disclosure easy: a visible indicator shows while you record, and one click copies an "I'm recording this meeting" notice you can paste into the meeting chat.

Is it really free?

Right now, everything is free — the product is in early access. Unlimited recording, live on-device transcription, speaker labels, and AI summaries need no account; signing in (also free) adds cloud text sync, search, and share links. A paid Pro plan is planned at $8/month ($5/month billed annually) but isn't purchasable today.

If nothing uploads, how do AI summaries work?

Summaries are the one optional feature that sends data anywhere: when you click Summarize, the transcript text (never audio) is sent to an LLM and the summary comes back — with every action item and decision citing the exact transcript turns it came from. Skip the button and nothing leaves your device at all.