Can I transcribe a Zoom call without a bot joining?

Yes. A local notetaker captures the audio directly on your Mac — your microphone plus the system output from the call — so nothing joins the meeting as a participant. QuietScribe works this way on macOS for Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex and any other app that plays audio through your Mac.

Does the other side of the call get transcribed too?

Yes. By capturing your Mac's system audio output in addition to your microphone, a local tool records both your voice and everyone else's, then transcribes the combined conversation.

Do I need a Zoom paid plan or admin permission to transcribe?

No. Because the capture happens on your own Mac rather than inside Zoom, it does not depend on Zoom's cloud-recording plan or on workspace admin settings. You should still follow applicable recording-consent laws and your organization's policies.

How to transcribe Zoom, Google Meet & Teams meetings locally on a Mac (no bot)

Most meeting transcription tools send a bot into your call and upload the audio to their cloud. You don't have to do it that way. On a Mac, you can capture both sides of any call and get a transcript and summary entirely on your own machine — no participant bot, no browser extension, no upload.

Why "local" is the hard part — and the whole point

Transcribing your own microphone is easy; any app can do it. The thing that makes meeting notes useful is capturing the other people too. Cloud services solve that by adding a bot to the meeting that records the shared room. The catch is that the bot is visible to everyone, and the recording lands on a vendor's servers.

A local tool solves the same problem differently: it captures your Mac's system audio output — the sound coming from the call — alongside your microphone, and mixes the two. The other participants are recorded because their voices are playing through your speakers, not because anything joined the call. Nothing shows up in the participant list, and the audio never leaves your Mac.

Step by step

Grant two permissions. Microphone (so it hears you) and system-audio capture (so it hears everyone else). On macOS you approve these once.
Start your call as normal. Open Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex — it doesn't matter which. Capture runs quietly in the background. No one sees a bot.
Talk; forget it's running. There's nothing to babysit. A good local tool detects when a call starts and stops on its own.
Read the notes afterward. When the call ends, an on-device speech model transcribes the recording and a local language model writes the summary, decisions and action items. The result saves to your notes app as Markdown.

Works with every meeting app. Because the capture is at the level of your Mac's audio, it doesn't care which conferencing app you use — Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex, a phone call on speaker, or an in-person conversation recorded through the mic all work the same way.

What about accuracy and languages?

Local transcription uses the same open speech models (the Whisper family) that power many cloud services, so quality is comparable for clear audio. QuietScribe transcribes over two dozen languages and can translate as it goes. Clean audio helps most: a decent headset beats a laptop mic across a conference table.

A word on consent

Recording locally doesn't change the law. Depending on where you and the other participants are, you may need to inform everyone or get their consent before recording. We wrote a plain-English guide: Is it legal to record a meeting? Read it before you rely on any transcription tool for work calls.

Doing it with QuietScribe

QuietScribe is built exactly for this on Apple Silicon Macs. It auto-detects Zoom, Meet, Teams and other calls, captures both sides on-device, transcribes with whisper.cpp, and summarizes with a local Gemma model — writing the notes straight into Obsidian, Apple Notes or Notion. Flat $10/month for one Mac, unlimited minutes, and nothing uploaded.

Try QuietScribe — free private beta