Notes for every call, with no bot
Riff takes notes from your Mac. Nothing joins the call, so the other people see no bot, and the recording is always visible and one click from stopping.
Riff notices the call
When a meeting app starts using your microphone, a card slides in at the top right of the screen, such as “Zoom is using your microphone”, with a Take Notes button. Riff watches for Zoom, Microsoft Teams, FaceTime, Slack huddles, Webex, Discord, and calls in Chrome, Safari, Arc, Edge, Brave, and Firefox.
For each app you can choose Always or Never from the card. With Always, Riff starts after a five-second countdown that Escape cancels.
With calendar access, a card also appears a minute before an event that has other attendees or a call link. You can also start a note yourself from the menu bar with Start Meeting Notes.
Both sides of the call
Riff records two tracks, so the transcript knows who spoke.
- Me is your microphone. On your Mac’s built-in speakers, voice processing removes the echo of the other side, and Riff drops any line of yours that repeats what the other side said.
- Them is the sound your Mac plays, from every app but Riff, or only from the meeting app if you choose that in Settings. macOS asks for System Audio Recording permission the first time.
You can name the Them speaker, and Riff suggests names from the calendar event’s attendees.
Riff transcribes as the call goes and writes the audio to disk as it arrives, so a crash does not lose the recording. Pause, Resume, and Stop are one click away in the note, the menu bar, and the meeting indicator. When the meeting app stops using the microphone for 15 seconds, Riff stops and says so, with a Keep Recording button.
Your notepad
The note is a plain notepad. Type # for a heading, - for a bullet, or [] for a checkbox. Each paragraph remembers when you typed it, which ties it to that moment in the transcript. Jot down what matters, and after the call Riff writes the notes around yours.
The live transcript
The transcript is hidden while you take notes, and one click away in the inspector, or Option-Command-T. Your lines are on the right in coral, and theirs are on the left.
Tell people you are taking notes
The recording bar has Copy Notice, which copies “I’m taking notes with Riff. The recording stays on my Mac.” for you to paste into the meeting chat.
Coming Up
With calendar access, the library’s sidebar lists your next three meetings under Coming Up. Choose one to open a note with its title and attendees filled in. Riff reads the calendars in the Calendar app on your Mac, including iCloud, Google, and Exchange accounts you added there.
Your library
Notes are grouped by Today, Yesterday, Previous 7 Days, and Earlier. Search covers titles, notes, transcripts, and dictations.
- Import an audio or video file to transcribe it into a note.
- Export a note as Markdown, copy it, or share it.
- Siri and Shortcuts can create a note, append text to one, start meeting notes, and summarize a meeting.