The meeting, in writing.

Record the room, not the platform

Meeting bots live inside one video platform and announce themselves in the participant list. Record and Transcribe works the other way: it records where you are — a conference room, a video call playing from your laptop, a hallway conversation, a one-on-one over coffee. Tap record on your iPhone, or from your Apple Watch when pulling your phone out would change the temperature of the conversation.

Minutes that write themselves

When the meeting ends, the memo is already on its way to text. Automatic transcription returns the full conversation with every line labelled by speaker — so “we agreed to ship on the 21st” has a name next to it. With Recorder Pro, a structured summary and action items sit on top, turning an hour of talk into a scannable set of decisions and next steps.

Meeting bot or phone recorder — which do you need?

Honestly: it depends on how your meetings happen. The tools solve different problems.

Your situation	Better tool	Why
Scheduled video calls, team wants shared notes in the workspace	A meeting bot (Otter, Fireflies…)	Calendar integration and team libraries are their home turf
In-person meetings — board rooms, client visits, site walkthroughs	This app	There is no call for a bot to join; the microphone has to be in the room
Ad-hoc conversations that were suddenly important	This app	One tap on phone or watch — no scheduling, no invite
You don’t want recording software visible in the participant list	This app	Record the room’s audio from your own device — with the room’s consent
Hybrid: some people in the room, some on screen	This app	One recording captures both sides; speaker labels still separate them

How do you record and transcribe a meeting on iPhone?

1. Ask the room. One sentence — “I’d like to record this so I don’t have to take notes, everyone okay with that?” — covers both courtesy and the consent laws that apply in many regions.
2. Put the phone in the middle of the table and tap record. Distance to the farthest speaker matters more than anything else. On the move, tap record from your Apple Watch instead.
3. Have the meeting. The screen can lock and calls can land — audio is already saved up to that second, so nothing said is lost.
4. Read the minutes. The transcript arrives with every line labelled by speaker; with Pro, a summary and action items sit on top.

For microphone placement, hybrid calls, and the legal details, see the full guide: how to record and transcribe in-person meetings. For turning the transcript into a record people will actually read, see how to write meeting minutes from a recording — and for what belongs in the finished minutes (and what to leave out), what to include in meeting minutes.

If the meeting happened on a call rather than in a room, the route is different — and each platform’s own recording is usually the better starting point: how to transcribe a Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet recording.

Safe for the meetings that matter

The higher the stakes, the worse it is to lose the recording. Audio is written to disk as you speak, survives locked screens and app switches, and stays on your device until you process it — then the audio is deleted after transcription unless you keep it. Record the board meeting with a clear conscience. (Why recordings get lost in other apps — and how this one is engineered so they can’t — is explained here.)