Daily use

Capture both sides, deliberately.

Start from the entry point that fits your workflow, verify both audio streams, and let Meeting Maid preserve a recoverable source file before processing begins.

Microphone + system audio Audio and video imports 12-hour safety limit

Start and stop a recording

Every manual entry point uses the same recording lifecycle:

  • Click the Meeting Maid menu bar item and choose Start Recording.
  • Use the recording control beside the main-window sidebar toggle.
  • Choose Recording > Start Recording.
  • Add Meeting Maid's Record a Meeting control to macOS Control Center.

Stop from the menu bar, main window, Recording menu, or Control Center. Processing begins immediately after both audio writers are finalized.

Verify audio before the agenda starts

  1. Choose one microphone. In Settings > Recording > Microphone, select an input or leave System default. A disconnected choice falls back to the system default.
  2. Enable the other participants. Turn on Record the other participants. This captures the system mix through ScreenCaptureKit; there is no per-output-device selector.
  3. Watch Levels. Open Settings > Recording > Levels. Speak and play audio to confirm both meters move before joining the meeting.

Meeting Maid records a single microphone. To combine several physical microphones, route them into a virtual or aggregate device and select that device. The app balances captured microphone and system speech levels after recording; it does not expose a gain control.

Use the controls while recording

  • The timer shows elapsed recording duration.
  • Separate meters show microphone and system-audio activity.
  • Mute microphone silences your side without tearing down the device, which helps avoid Bluetooth mode switching.
  • A live transcript appears in the menu bar and active meeting when AWS Transcribe is selected.
  • Processing and warning notices appear in the menu bar, sidebar, and beside the selected meeting title.
Mute carries into the next recording

Mute state survives recording end. Every later successfully started recording warns again while the microphone remains muted. Choose Keep Muted or Unmute Microphone.

Keeping or dismissing the warning leaves the microphone muted.

Silence prompt

After five minutes with no audible microphone or system activity, Meeting Maid asks whether recording should continue. The prompt does not discard audio already written.

Record Zoom and Teams automatically

Open Settings > Recording and turn on Start recording automatically when a call begins. Meeting Maid observes which app holds the microphone and starts after Zoom or Microsoft Teams has held it for a few seconds.

  • Short join-and-leave activity does not create a stub recording.
  • Brief audio dropouts and headset changes do not immediately end an automatic recording.
  • An automatically started recording stops when the detected call ends.
  • Meeting Maid never stops a recording you started manually.
  • It never starts a second recording while one is already active.
  • Other calling apps are not detected automatically; start those recordings manually.
Automatic recording is off by default

Enable it only after you have a reliable consent and notification process.

Import existing audio or video

Choose File > Import Audio or Video, press Command+O, or use Import Audio beside the main-window sidebar toggle.

Media Supported formats Stored source
Audio WAV, MP3, M4A, CAF, AAC, FLAC, OGG The supported source extension is retained
Video MP4, MOV, AVI, MKV, M4V Audio is extracted to M4A first

Imports use the same transcription, speaker, note, and export pipeline as live recordings. For calendar matching, Meeting Maid uses the best embedded or filesystem timestamp available and accounts for media duration instead of pretending the import time was the recording time.

Understand the safety limits

Condition Meeting Maid response
Five minutes with no audible activity Prompts you to continue or stop
Both audio files stop receiving frames for ten minutes Stops capture and processes audio already written
A recording reaches 12 hours Stops that recording and begins processing
The app closes during capture Checks the surviving file at next launch and attempts bounded recovery

Control source-audio retention

Source audio is kept forever by default under ~/Library/Application Support/MeetingMaid/Recordings/. Open Settings > Recording > Source Audio Retention to preview a shorter window for meeting-linked and unlinked legacy audio separately.

  1. Select a window. Choices range from three years through one day, plus Forever.
  2. Review the preview. Selection alone does not change the saved policy.
  3. Click Apply and confirm. Only then is the retention policy saved.

Cleanup runs after launch recovery and once per day. It can permanently remove eligible playback audio while preserving the meeting record, transcript, and notes. Active, processing, importing, loaded, recent, unsafe-path, shared-path, and undated audio remains protected. Unlinked legacy groups use their last-modified dates.

Recover after an interruption

On the next launch, Meeting Maid retries an interrupted recording only when the surviving file is larger than the conservative 4,096-byte header-only ceiling. Retries are bounded so one damaged file cannot block startup indefinitely.

  • If the transcript survived, open the meeting and use Generate Notes again.
  • If only audio survived, use Share > Export Audio, then import the exported M4A to retry processing.
  • If the library was repaired or quarantined, read the recovery notice before moving any managed files.
Do not rename managed files while Meeting Maid is running

Use Share for portable copies and Settings > General > Storage only to inspect the managed data folder.