Bot-Free AI Note Taker for Microsoft Teams on Mac

What Teams gives you without another tool

• Live transcription: start it from More actions › Record and transcribe, if your licence, your admin’s policy and your role in the meeting allow it. Our guide to Microsoft Teams transcription covers who can start it and where the transcript is stored.
• Recording: the organiser and people from the same organisation with an eligible licence can record; guests, external and anonymous users can’t. See how to record a Teams meeting.
• AI notes: the Recap tab, which Microsoft calls intelligent recap, offers AI meeting notes and suggested tasks after a transcribed meeting. It needs a Teams Premium or Microsoft 365 Copilot licence assigned to the user.

If you’re a guest, an external attendee or on a plan without those licences, some or all of this won’t be available to you, which is usually why people look for a separate note taker.

Why note-taking bots get stuck in Teams

Most AI note takers join a Teams meeting as an external participant. Microsoft now looks for them: under the meeting policy Manage external bots and their access to meetings, the default setting, When detected, require approval before joining, holds detected bots in the lobby until someone admits them, whatever the meeting’s own lobby settings. Organisers are reminded of the risk before they let one in.

Admins can switch detection off with Do not detect bots, but the default points the other way, and on 23 September 2026 Microsoft announced that admins can also block identified external bots automatically. Microsoft’s reasons: bots can record without participants knowing and store meeting data outside the organisation’s compliance boundaries.

How to take AI notes in a Teams meeting without a bot

1. Join the Teams meeting as usual, in the Teams app or in the browser.
2. Tell the others you’re taking notes, as you would with any recording.
3. Start recording in QuietNote. It captures your microphone and the meeting audio on your computer; nothing joins the call.
4. Stop when the meeting ends. QuietNote transcribes the recording on your computer with a local Whisper model.
5. Read the summary, decisions and action items, written by a local model through Ollama, or by a cloud model with your own key if you turn that on.
6. Keep the notes: each meeting is a Markdown file in a folder you choose.

Because it records from your own device, it works the same whether you’re the organiser, an attendee or a guest from another organisation, and it doesn’t depend on a Teams licence or an admin policy. That also means no Teams recording banner appears, so telling people is up to you; our guide on recording consent explains when you have to.

Teams notes, a bot or your own computer

Mac first, Windows later

QuietNote is coming soon for macOS 14.2 or later; Windows and Linux versions are planned. It sits next to the Teams desktop app or Teams in a browser, and works the same way with Zoom, Google Meet and other call apps.

Or skip the bot entirely

A bot in a Teams meeting has to be detected, admitted and accepted by everyone in the call. Recording on your own computer leaves Teams out of it.

QuietNote records your microphone and your computer’s audio on your own Mac, so no bot joins the call and nothing is added to the participant list. It transcribes on your computer with a local Whisper model, and writes the summary, decisions and action items with a local model through Ollama, unless you choose a cloud model with your own key. Each meeting is saved as a Markdown file in a folder you pick, and you don’t need an account.

It’s coming soon for macOS 14.2 or later, with Windows and Linux planned. Join the waitlist and we’ll email you the day it ships; waitlist members keep 50% off for life. Whatever you use, tell people you’re taking notes where the rules require it.