What Does an AI Notetaker Need Permission to Do on Your Mac?

Two permissions do the transcription

A notetaker that does not send a bot into the call has to hear the meeting from your Mac. That takes two things. The microphone gives it your voice. System audio gives it everyone else, because the other people on a Zoom or Meet call reach you as sound your Mac plays. Without the second one, the tool only hears the far side as whatever leaks from your speakers back into your microphone, which is to say badly, and not at all when you wear headphones.

That is the honest minimum, and the vendor docs agree on it. Granola's troubleshooting page says Microphone and Screen and System Audio recording must both be on. Wispr Flow's setup page lists Enable Microphone for your voice and Enable System Audio for other participants. Everything an app asks for beyond those two is paying for something other than the transcript, and it is worth knowing what.

Screen recording and system audio share a pane, not a grant

This is where most buyers stop reading the prompt. On current macOS, the setting lives under Privacy and Security in a pane Apple calls Screen and System Audio Recording, and the name makes it sound like one switch. It is not. Apple's own help page says you can allow apps to record both your screen and audio, or just your audio.

The difference comes from how the app was built. Since macOS 14.2, Apple has offered an audio tap that captures the sound another app is playing, and the first time an app records through one, macOS asks for system audio recording permission only. The older route was screen capture, which brings the audio along with every pixel on every display. Wispr Flow's docs show the split from the user's side: on macOS 14.4 or later it raises a separate system audio prompt, and on macOS 13 through 14.3 it relies on Screen Recording access.

Recall.ai, which sells a desktop recording SDK that notetaker apps build on, puts the choice plainly in its developer docs: request system audio if you do not need video of the meeting, otherwise request screen capture. So when a notetaker holds full screen recording just to take notes, ask what it does with the screen. Some have a real answer, such as grabbing the slide that was on screen when a number was quoted. If that is a feature you want, fine. If it is not, you granted a lot more than a transcript needs.

Accessibility reaches furthest, and it is usually a convenience

Accessibility is the permission people grant with the least thought, because the name sounds harmless. Apple describes it as letting a third party app access and control your Mac, and its help page warns that giving an app this access also gives it access to your contacts, calendar and other information. It exists so screen readers and automation tools can read what is in every window and act on it. A notetaker with this grant can read text in apps that have nothing to do with your meeting.

What do notetakers want it for? The answers in their own docs are modest. Recall.ai's permission table says its SDK uses Accessibility to detect meetings and work out who is speaking. Wispr Flow says it uses it for call end detection, meeting recognition and placing its notepad beside the meeting window. Those are useful. None of them is transcription.

One detail matters if you are comparing tools built on a shared SDK. Recall.ai's docs say that by default its SDK requests Accessibility, microphone and screen capture every time it starts, unless the app developer chooses otherwise. Whether you get asked for the broad grants can depend on a default the vendor never changed.

Full Disk Access is where you should say no

Recall.ai lists one more permission as optional: Full Disk Access, used to pull the meeting link out of Teams meetings and Google Meet in Chrome. Full Disk Access lets an app read files that macOS otherwise protects even from apps you trust. A meeting link is a convenience. If a notetaker asks for this, find out what it needs the link for and whether the calendar invite already has it. Usually it does.

What Driffle asks for, and what it does without

Driffle's setup asks for two permissions before it will transcribe: the microphone and system audio. System audio is captured with Apple's audio tap, so on a current Mac Driffle should show up in the audio only part of that pane, not with screen recording. The text macOS shows in the system audio prompt is Driffle's own: it records system audio so it can transcribe the other participants in your meetings, and it does not record your screen. Audio is used for transcription and not stored.

Accessibility is the third row on that setup screen, and it is marked optional. Driffle uses it to read who is speaking from the meeting window, so lines carry a person's name instead of a speaker number. Turn it off and Driffle still transcribes both sides; you lose the names it reads from the meeting window. The setup screen says so in as many words. If you grant it, Driffle holds the same broad grant Apple warns about, and you should weigh that the same way you would for any other app.

Meeting detection does not need either broad grant. Driffle notices a call has started by asking macOS which apps are currently using the microphone, a list the audio system keeps anyway, and matching it against known call apps. It never reads that audio and never looks at the screen to do it. Two limits stay true: transcription and the AI run in the cloud, not on your Mac, and Driffle is a direct download for Macs with Apple Silicon only.

A five minute check on any notetaker

Install the tool, finish its setup, then open System Settings and go to Privacy and Security. In Screen and System Audio Recording, see whether the app is allowed to record your screen and audio or audio only. Then look for it under Accessibility, and under Full Disk Access.

Next, switch off everything beyond microphone and system audio, quit the app fully and reopen it, and run a ten minute test call with a colleague. Check that both sides are in the transcript. Whatever stopped working is what the extra grants were for, and now you can decide if it is worth the access. If the tool refuses to record at all without Accessibility, ask the vendor in writing why transcription depends on reading other apps. A good vendor answers that question in a sentence.

Grant the minimum, then add on purpose

The prompts arrive in a row during setup, when you are trying to get to your next call, and that is when the broad grants get clicked through. Start with the two that hear the meeting, and add anything else later, once you know what it buys you.

If you want a Mac notetaker that needs no bot and transcribes on microphone and system audio alone, Driffle is at driffle.ai/download.