Does Your AI Notetaker Still Transcribe You When You're on Mute?

Short answer: it depends on where the notetaker listens

Mute is a setting inside the meeting app. It tells Zoom, Meet or Teams to stop sending your voice to everyone else in the call. It does not switch off the microphone on your laptop, and it says nothing to any other app that is also listening to that microphone.

So the answer splits by capture mode, not by brand. If your notetaker joins as a bot, it is another participant in the call and hears what the call sends it. When you mute, the call stops sending your voice, so the bot does not hear you either. If your notetaker runs on your own computer, it usually takes your voice straight from the microphone, before the meeting app has any say. Muting in Zoom does not reach it, and what you say on mute can land in the transcript.

What the vendors' own docs tell you

None of the main tools has a help page titled "what happens when I mute", but their docs on how capture works settle it.

Granola says it has no meeting bot and runs on your computer using your system audio and your microphone. Its transcript shows your microphone as one side (green bubbles, or Me) and system audio as the other (grey bubbles, or Them). Your microphone is a separate input that Granola reads itself, so a Zoom mute does not stop it.

Fireflies offers both modes, which makes the split easy to see. Its desktop app guide describes the notetaker bot that joins the meeting as a participant, and a system audio mode that captures audio directly from your device without joining. The same guide lists microphone access as a required permission for the desktop app. Same vendor, two different answers to the mute question, depending on which button you pressed when the meeting started.

Otter's Notetaker joins calls as a participant, and so does Fathom, so the bot rule applies to both. If you use any vendor's desktop or system audio mode instead, assume the microphone rule until you have tested it.

Why on-device capture works this way

It is not a bug. A notetaker on your laptop has no reliable way to read the mute state of every meeting app, browser tab and phone app you might use, and the alternative, guessing, fails in the worst way: a tool that stops transcribing whenever it thinks you are muted will drop the moment you start talking and forget to unmute, which happens in most meetings.

There is also a real upside. Plenty of what you want in your notes is said off the call, like the reminder you mutter to yourself on mute ("send them the revised quote") or the in-person half of a hybrid meeting. A bot never hears either.

The cost is just as real. The comment about the client you make on mute, or the personal call you take mid-meeting, can end up in a transcript, and from there in a summary that someone else reads.

What Driffle does

Driffle captures on your Mac with no bot in the call, and it hears you on mute. Its audio helper opens the microphone directly through Core Audio, independent of whatever Zoom, Meet or Teams is doing, and records your voice and the call's audio as two separate streams. When exactly one voice is on the microphone stream, Driffle treats that voice as you. When the other side's voices leak out of your laptop speakers and back into your microphone, Driffle marks that as an echo of the call rather than a new speaker, so it is not mistaken for you.

Nothing starts on its own. Driffle captures a meeting only when you start it, and the floating pill has Pause, Resume and Stop. Pause fully stops capture of both your microphone and the call audio, and does not generate a summary, so it is the control to use when you want something kept out. Mute is for the people on the call. Pause is for the notes.

If something slips through, transcript segments can be deleted after the call. Processing and AI run in the cloud, not on your Mac, and Driffle is available for Apple Silicon Macs only.

A two minute test before you trust it

Run this once with whichever tool you are trialling, on a call with a colleague. Start the notetaker. Mute yourself in the meeting app. Say a test sentence you would recognise, such as "blue giraffe budget". Unmute and talk normally for a minute. End the call and search the transcript and the summary for the test phrase.

If the phrase is there, your notetaker hears you on mute, and the habit to build is to pause the notetaker as well as muting the call before saying anything you would not want written down. If it is not there, ask the opposite question: what else is it missing when you speak before unmuting? While you test, the Recording Indicator in Control Center on your Mac shows when the microphone is in use. It staying on while you are muted is a hint, not proof, that something is still writing down what you say.

If you want notes from every call with no bot in the room and a pause that actually stops capture, Driffle is available for Apple Silicon Macs at driffle.ai/download.