Troubleshooting
Most problems are one of the following.
The prompt never appears
- Is Recordist running? After a restart it may not be: open it from Applications. If Start at login in Settings → General shows on but Recordist did not open after a restart, turn it off and on once.
- Check Settings → Detection. Microphone in use by another app must be on for apps Recordist does not recognise by name.
- On macOS, make sure Recordist is allowed to run in the background: System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions. It is listed there once Start at login has taken effect.
- Some apps open the microphone only when you unmute. Unmute once and the prompt appears.
- If you chose Snooze on the card, prompts are silent for the time you picked. The menu bar menu says Detection paused during a snooze; choose Resume detection to end it.
- Browser meetings: the prompt appears when Chrome opens the mic. For titles and participants, pair the Chrome extension.
More detail: The record prompt didn’t appear.
The recording is silent, or only one side is there
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Only you are in the transcript | System audio permission missing | macOS: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording → enable Recordist, then restart the app |
| Only they are in the transcript | Microphone permission missing, or the wrong mic is selected | Grant Microphone permission; check Settings → Audio → Microphone |
| Audio is there but the transcript is empty or stops part-way | Transcription failed or did not finish | Open the meeting and choose Try again, or Transcribe again… from the meeting’s … menu |
Transcription is slow
- Pick a smaller model, such as Small (English). It is faster than the default, with some loss in accuracy. See Transcription models.
- If the live transcript falls behind during a meeting, it catches up after you stop; nothing is lost.
- Close other heavy apps, so transcription has more of the processor and memory to itself.
Notes are not generated
- “The built-in notes engine isn’t ready yet”: the engine and its model download once, in the background, after setup (the engine, plus a model of 0.9 GB on 8 GB Macs or 2.4 GB on larger ones). Open Settings → AI notes to watch progress or press Set up now. Notes written before it finished are basic fallback notes; regenerate them afterwards.
- “Ollama is not running” (only if you chose Ollama I already run): start Ollama, or set its address under Settings → AI notes, or switch back to the built-in engine.
- “Model not found” (own Ollama): run
ollama pull qwen3:4b-instruct(or whichever model you selected). - “The free plan includes 3 AI notes a month and this month’s are used up”: after the 7-day Pro trial, the Free plan includes 3 AI notes a month. The counter resets on the first of the month. Transcription is unaffected.
- Provider returns 401: the API key is wrong or revoked. Paste it again under Settings → AI notes → Notes are written by.
- Notes marked as a fallback were produced without a model because none was reachable; click Regenerate once the provider is back.
- Local notes take minutes on an 8 GB machine by design; here is why, and what to do.
An agent or the extension cannot connect
- The desktop app must be running for the extension and for anything that needs live access; the MCP gateway can read your meetings with the app closed.
- If your assistant says the token is missing, open the app once: the token is created on first launch.
- If another program is using the connection the app needs, Settings → Integrations says so. Quit the other program, most often a second copy of Recordist, and open Recordist again.
The app will not open
- macOS says the app is “damaged” or “cannot be opened”: the download was interrupted. Download the file again from the download page, and compare its SHA-256 (in Terminal, type
shasum -a 256and drag the file onto the window) with the one shown next to its button. - macOS says the developer is unidentified: the copy is an old build. Download the current one from the download page.
- Windows or Linux: while the Windows installer’s signature is new, SmartScreen may ask once before it runs (the steps); on Linux, see Installing Recordist on Linux and what differs from the Mac.
Reset without losing meetings
Quit Recordist, rename the settings file in the data folder (its path is under Settings → General, with a Show in Finder link) to settings.backup.json, and open the app. Preferences return to defaults; the database and audio are untouched.
Logs
The app’s log is in ~/Library/Logs/app.recordist.desktop/ (in Finder, choose Go → Go to Folder and paste the path). A new log file starts at 2 MB, and the five most recent older files are kept. The log contains no transcript text, but it can name meetings by the titles taken from your calendar or the meeting app’s window. The built-in notes engine writes its own log to logs/notes-engine.log in the data folder.
Reporting a problem
Open a ticket or email support@recordist.app. Attach Settings → General → Export diagnostics: one file with the app version, the operating system and memory, your settings, permission status, database counts and the last 400 lines of the log. Your settings never hold API keys or the API token, and the file shows calendar feeds only by their host. The log lines can name meetings, so read the file before you send it. It contains no audio, no transcripts and no notes. Support never asks for your transcripts or meeting audio; if we need details, send diagnostics only.