Which meeting apps are detected?
Recordist does not integrate with meeting platforms. It watches your own machine for the signs of a meeting and names the app when it can.
Detected by name
Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Slack huddles, FaceTime and Discord by their app, and Google Meet, Teams, Zoom, Webex and Slack in a browser by the browser’s window title: on the Mac, and on Windows and Linux (under X11) once you turn on Read the meeting app’s window title under Settings → Detection. When one of these opens your microphone, the prompt shows the app’s icon and, if the meeting is in your calendar, its title and attendees.
Detected through the microphone
Anything else that takes the microphone: a phone call routed through your speakers, a podcast recorder, a browser-based tool we have never heard of. The prompt says “An app is using your microphone” and names the process where macOS lets us. You decide whether to record.
Browser calls
Google Meet, Teams and Zoom in a browser are detected through the microphone like any other app. To get the meeting title and a more precise start and end, pair the optional Chrome extension. It only watches the supported meeting sites.
On Windows and Linux, window titles are off until you turn on Read the meeting app’s window title under Settings → Detection, because those systems ask for no permission and so Recordist asks you. Turned on, it reads only the windows of the program that has the microphone, and only a title that is a meeting page (Meet, Teams, Zoom, Webex or a Slack huddle); it never reads the titles of your other tabs, and it never logs a title. Without it, a call in a browser stays “Browser” unless the extension is paired or your calendar feed names the meeting. On Linux under Wayland no program may read another’s window titles, so nothing is read there; the calendar feed or the extension gives the name.
Calendar hints
With a calendar, the prompt already knows the meeting title and attendees, and Prep Briefs can be built before the call. There are two sources, and they work together:
- The Mac’s calendar. Read-only and on by default (Name meetings from my calendar in Settings → Detection); it works once you allow calendar access.
- A calendar feed, on every platform. Under Settings → Detection, paste the private address from Google Calendar, Outlook or iCloud. Recordist reads it every 5 minutes. On Windows and Linux the feed is how a meeting gets its name and its Prep Brief.
Your name on invites (next to the feed, and in setup on Windows and Linux) tells Recordist which name on an invite is you, so the card and the other side’s lines never use your own name.
How the card gets the meeting’s name
When a call app takes the microphone, the prompt names the meeting from the calendar event under way, preferring one whose join link belongs to that app, then from the app’s window title where you have turned that on, then from the Chrome extension. If the invite’s own title says nothing (“Meeting”, “Call”, “1:1”), the prompt names the call by the people: “With Hannah Foster”. Next to the title the prompt says where the name came from, in plain words: “from your calendar”, “from the Zoom window”, “from the Meet tab”. If nothing matches, the prompt is the plain one, and when a calendar is on it adds “Not on your calendar.” Type a title of your own and that is the one kept.
Not detected
- Calls on your phone that do not go through your machine.
- Meetings where you are muted for the whole time and nothing else opens the mic (rare; the app detects the mic being held, not sound).
- Anything on a different machine.
Switching detectors off
Every detector has its own switch under Settings → Detection. There is no list of apps to exclude yet: Not this one on the card keeps it away for that app for 30 minutes, and Pause detection for 1 hour in the menu bar silences every prompt.