Record a meeting

Any note can hold a meeting. Open the note, start capture, and Oyma records your microphone and the call audio on your Mac. When you stop, the transcript and an AI summary are written into the same note.

Before your first meeting, check two things:

• Permissions. Call audio needs macOS 14.2 or later and the Screen & System Audio Recording permission. See Recording permissions on macOS.
• A summary model. Summaries need Ollama on your Mac or your own Anthropic or OpenAI key. See Summaries and Ask with Ollama or your own key. Recording and transcription work without one.

Start recording

1. Open the note you want the meeting in, or create a new one with ⌘N.
2. Click the waveform button in the bottom-right corner of the note and choose Start capture, or press ⌘⇧R.
3. The first time, Oyma asks to set up live transcription. Click Download and record to fetch the speech model once, or Record without live transcription to record now and transcribe later. See Transcription models and languages.
4. The recording dock appears with a timer and a level meter, and the note gains a meeting layout.

If no note is open, Oyma creates a new meeting note when the recording starts. The first time you record, a reminder appears: make sure everyone has agreed to be recorded.

The recording dock

While a capture runs, the dock replaces the waveform button in the bottom-right corner. It shows Recording, the elapsed time and your microphone level.

• Pause recording / Resume recording pauses and continues. Paused time isn’t recorded.
• Stop recording ends the capture. ⌘⇧R stops it too.
• Return to recording note appears when you’ve switched to another note. The capture keeps running while you work elsewhere, and the dock says which note it’s recording into.
• ⋯ opens the same menu as the waveform button: Ask, Transcript, Summary and Capture options….

If something needs your attention, such as a disconnected microphone or call audio that stopped, the dock shows a short notice. Click it for details and a fix. Recording continues in most of these cases.

When you stop

1. The dock shows Saving recording… and then Transcribing… if live text is missing.
2. With Summarise after transcription on (the default), a summary is written into the note: Writing summary….
3. If the note still has its default title, Oyma gives it a short descriptive one. A title you typed is never replaced.

Open Transcript or Summary from the waveform button or the ⋯ menu to read, copy or regenerate them. To record more into the same note later, start capture again from that note and the new audio is added to it.

Meeting detection

Oyma notices active calls in Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Slack huddles, Discord, Around and Whereby.

• If Oyma is in the background, a small card appears at the top right of your screen, for example “Zoom detected”, with Start taking notes. It disappears after five seconds if you ignore it, and only appears once per meeting.
• If Oyma is in front, the dock shows Meeting detected with Start capture.

To skip the prompt, turn on Start recording automatically in Settings › Meetings › Detection & recording. It’s off by default.

Detection reads window titles, which macOS only allows with the Screen & System Audio Recording permission. Without it, you’ll see an Enable meeting detection banner. You can still start capture by hand.

Participants from your calendar

Turn on Detect participants from Calendar in Settings › Meetings to fill the note’s participants from the macOS Calendar event happening at the same time. macOS asks for Calendar access the first time. It’s off by default.

Other things to know

• Use headphones. Without them, your microphone picks up the other side from your speakers, and their words can appear twice in the transcript.
• Transcripts aren’t split by speaker. Lines come from your microphone or from the call audio, not from named people.
• One capture at a time. Finish or cancel processing before starting another.
• Commands in the palette (⌘O, then >): Re-transcribe current meeting, Re-summarise current meeting (AI), Copy meeting transcript to clipboard and Reveal meeting recording in Finder.

Consent is your responsibility

Recording a conversation without permission is illegal in many places, and the rules differ between countries and states. Tell everyone on the call that you’re recording and get their agreement before you start. Oyma doesn’t notify other participants.