What Flow Notes does
Three things happen around every meeting you record — and after you press Stop, all three are automatic.
Botless recording
Audio is captured on your own device. Nothing joins the call, so guests never see a recorder bot. Works with Zoom, Teams, Meet, and in‑person meetings.
Cloud transcription
When a recording ends it's transcribed in Applab's cloud, with per‑line timestamps, separated speakers, and strong Arabic + English support — including meetings that switch between the two.
AI meeting notes
A summary, topics, decisions, key points, and action items assigned to the right people — written after each meeting by the notes engine you choose.
You press record and get back to the conversation. Flow Notes handles the transcript and the write‑up — you just review and share.
The business value
Meetings are where decisions and commitments are made — and where they quietly get lost. Flow Notes closes that gap: capture any conversation, internal or external, and turn it into shared, accountable action that anyone can pick up and drive forward with AI.
Capture any discussion
Internal team syncs or external client & stakeholder calls — botless, on any platform or in person. Nothing important goes unrecorded.
Turn talk into tasks
Every decision and commitment becomes a clear, structured action item — assigned to the invitee who took it on — that the whole team can see.
One source everyone trusts
Notes and tasks live in one place people can search and inquire about — instead of scattered memories, chats, and inboxes.
Ask & act with Claude
Through the MCP connection, anyone can ask Claude about their tasks in plain language — and start addressing them with AI.
- Nothing falls through the cracks. A commitment made to a client, or across teams, is captured the moment it's spoken — not left to whoever remembers to write it down.
- Shared accountability. Action items are explicit and owned, so every stakeholder knows exactly what they're responsible for.
- Answers on demand. “What did we promise the client last week?” or “What are my open tasks?” — Claude answers from the actual meetings through MCP, not guesswork.
- From insight to action. Because Claude can read the notes and tasks, it doesn't just recall them — it helps draft the follow‑up email, the status update, the next step.
Every stakeholder conversation becomes durable, searchable, accountable work — and the leap from “we discussed it” to “it's being handled” happens in Claude, not in someone's memory.
First-time setup
The very first launch asks you to sign in and walks you through a short setup. It takes about a minute, and you can step Back or Skip at any point.
Download Flow Notes for macOS or Windows at flownotes.applab.qa/download — always the latest version. You only need that page for a first install or a new machine; after that the app keeps itself up to date.
- Sign in with Applab. Flow Notes uses your Applab work account — a browser window opens for sign‑in and no password is ever stored in the app.
- Welcome. A quick tour of the three things above. Select Get set up to continue.
- Get ready to record. Give Flow Notes access to your Microphone (your voice) and System audio (everyone else on the call) with Grant access / Open System Settings, then Continue. You only do this once.
- How your meetings are handled. A short note on where audio and notes go, and a reminder that — because no bot joins — telling participants they're being recorded is up to you. Select I understand.
- Connect your calendar (optional) — select Connect calendar so Flow Notes can show your Outlook meetings and link recordings to them, or Skip for now.
- AI meeting notes — select Use the default to continue (or set up your account here if the step offers it). To get AI notes you'll need to connect your Claude account — see section 09.
- You’re all set. Choose Record my first meeting or Go to my library.
On a Mac, macOS itself will pop up to confirm Microphone and Screen & System Audio Recording access; if you're sent to System Settings, the step waits for access, with Check again. If you continue without them you can grant them later from Settings ▸ Recording ▸ Permissions — but recording stays silent until you do. (Windows needs only the microphone.)
Skip leaves the whole setup. Want to run through it again later? Open Settings ▸ About and choose Run again next to First-run setup.
Recording a meeting
Start a recording the moment a conversation begins — capture starts instantly, so you never miss the first minute.
- Press New Recording at the top of the sidebar (or ⌘+R / Ctrl+R). Recording begins right away.
- Click the title (or Untitled recording) to name it in place, and use Link to a calendar meeting underneath to attach the right event — or change or unlink it. If exactly one online meeting is running, the recording links itself.
- Use Mute, Pause, and Stop as needed (while paused, nothing is recorded). Watch the live level meters for You (mic) and Participants to confirm both sides are captured.
- Press Stop — it turns into End recording? — and press again to confirm (or Keep to carry on). Recordings under 10 seconds with no sound are discarded automatically.
If Flow Notes hears no audio, loses participant audio, or your microphone stops picking up speech, a notice appears right under the timer — often with an Open Settings button to fix it.
If something changes mid-meeting
- Your mic disconnects (unplugged, battery, Bluetooth): recording carries on with your system's default mic, the recorder tells you which one, and it switches back as soon as your chosen mic returns. If your chosen mic isn't connected when you start, recording starts on the default mic and moves to the chosen one when it arrives.
- On a Mac, a display is unplugged or the screen turns off: your microphone keeps recording and the meeting audio reconnects within seconds — the recorder says so while it does.
- Your screen stays on while you record, so it won't dim or lock during a long meeting. Closing the lid or letting the computer sleep still stops and saves the recording.
- If capture is lost anyway, you get a Recording stopped early notification and a banner saying when it stopped and that everything up to then is saved, with Open meeting. If the meeting is still going, start a new recording.
- Recordings stop on their own when the detected call ends, after 10 minutes of silence, or when the computer sleeps — a notification tells you, and the recording is processed as usual.
Two meetings at once?
If two online meetings overlap when a call is detected, Flow Notes asks “Which meeting is this?” instead of guessing — pick one, or Neither. Marking a meeting to Always auto‑record answers that in advance. (Started with New Recording during an overlap? The recording starts unlinked — use Link to a calendar meeting.) And if a different meeting starts while you're still recording, the call prompt shows Another meeting started with Switch to finish this recording and start a separate one.
A colleague already recording?
If someone else is already recording the same meeting, Flow Notes tells you. You can keep yours as a standby (kept only if their recording ends early), Request access to theirs instead, or record anyway if your organization allows it.
Interviewing someone? Turn on Copilot
Select “This is an interview” during a recording, choose an evaluation rubric and the format (online or in‑person) in Interview Setup, and select Enable Interview Mode. The Suggested questions panel then offers questions and lists under‑covered competencies — mark each one asked or dismiss it as you go, or press Suggest now for a fresh batch. After the meeting, the interview scorecard opens with a summary: recommendation, overall score, and a bar per competency.
Navigate away and the recording keeps going in the background. The top of the sidebar turns into a status pill — In progress with the elapsed time — that brings you straight back to the live session.
Never miss a call
Flow Notes watches for meetings so you don't have to remember to hit record. Two small helpers make that effortless.
Prefer it hands‑off? In Settings ▸ Recording ▸ Meeting Detection turn on Prompt to record when a call starts, or Start recording automatically — it then starts quietly in the background, and the ribbon is your confirmation. Flow Notes detects Teams, Zoom, and Webex calls, even ad‑hoc ones.
Need a different choice for a single meeting? Open an online meeting in your calendar and set Auto-record this meeting to Always or Never (or Use default) to override the global setting for just that event or series. A red record icon on the event marks a meeting that will record; a crossed‑out one marks a meeting that will be skipped.
macOS may deliver reminders silently. If Flow Notes shows a tip about it, choose Open Notification Settings and turn on Banners or Alerts and Play sound.
Your library, notes & transcript
Every recording lands in your Library: All meetings, Shared with me, Shared by me, and Imports. Search with ⌘+F / Ctrl+F, narrow down with Filters (the active filter shows as a chip you can remove), and use View to switch layout and grouping. Select lets you act on several meetings at once.
Open any meeting and it slides in. Once processing finishes (the header moves from Transcribing to Ready, and the Notes tab shows Uploading → Transcribing → Writing notes as it goes), you get two tabs: Notes and Transcript, with the audio player above them.
The Notes tab
A structured recap — Summary, Topics, Key Points, Decisions, and Action Items. A strip of section links along the top (with a count for each, and how many actions are done) jumps to each part and follows your scroll. Topics and points are timestamped, so a click jumps the audio to that moment. A line at the bottom says what wrote the notes — for example Generated by Claude Sonnet 5.5.
For a very long meeting, the notes cover its start and end and say so: “part of the middle of the transcript was left out.” If notes couldn't be written, the tab shows Notes unavailable with the reason and a Try again button. When the cause was your Claude or ChatGPT account hitting its usage limit, Flow Notes also tries once more on its own after the limit resets.
The Transcript tab
The full, timestamped transcript, with consecutive lines from the same speaker grouped into one turn. Click any line to jump playback there, and press ⌘+F / Ctrl+F to search it (↑/↓ steps through matches). With Auto‑scroll on, the transcript follows the audio; scroll away and it pauses, with a Jump to current button to catch up.
Name the speakers
The Speakers card lists everyone the transcript found (“Me”, “Speaker 1”, “Speaker 2”…). Press play next to one to hear a sample of this speaker, then give them a name — it updates the transcript, the written notes, and action‑item owners. Set your own name in Settings ▸ General and “Me” is relabelled everywhere.
Use Regenerate… on the Notes tab (you can add optional instructions) or Regenerate Notes in the meeting's Actions (…) menu to re‑run the notes. Re‑transcribe, in the same menu, redoes the whole recording; it warns you first if speaker names you've set would be lost, and afterwards offers Regenerate notes so the notes match the new transcript.
Continue or remove a meeting
Meeting picked up again after a break? Actions (…) ▸ Resume Recording records more audio into the same meeting, and the new part is transcribed with it. New voices are numbered after the existing speakers, so names you've already set stay with the right people. Delete Meeting (or Select in the library for several at once) permanently removes the audio, transcript, and notes, including the copy of the recording on your computer — it can't be undone.
A meeting that mixes Arabic and English shows a green “Both languages kept” line — that's good news, not an error. Select Details to see how it was handled.
Your admin may set recordings to be deleted a while after they're transcribed. The meeting says so, with the date, and once the audio is gone playback, download, Re‑transcribe, and Resume Recording are no longer available — but the notes, transcript, and a short voice sample per speaker stay, so you can still name speakers.
Action items & sharing
Turn a recap into follow‑through. Action items go to the right people, and the whole note can be sent or shared in a couple of clicks.
- Action items are assigned for you. When a recording is linked to a calendar meeting, the notes assign each task to the invitee who took it on — but only when the conversation makes it clear; otherwise it stays unassigned instead of guessing. A task can have several owners: click the owner (or Assign) to tick invitees from the linked event, add anyone else with Custom name…, or clear it with Unassign. Your choice always wins.
- Share Notes (in the meeting header) — the linked meeting's invitees are filled in for you; add or remove recipients with the autocomplete, choose what to include (Notes, Notes + Transcript, or Action Items; Scorecard for interviews), choose Include timestamps, edit the message, and Send. People outside your organization are marked External, and you confirm with Send anyway before the email goes.
- Manage Access (also in the header) — give colleagues the Viewer, Editor, or Owner role, choose how much they can see (Notes, + Transcript, or Full (incl. audio)) and for how long (Never to 90 days), and leave Notify by email on to let them know (sent from your own mailbox, with no meeting content). An Owner can manage access too, but can only pass on as much access, for as long, as you gave them. Removing someone takes effect at once, with Undo in case it was a slip — and since audio links handed to people you share with expire after an hour, removing access also cuts off the audio within the hour.
- Copy AI Note on the Notes tab copies the note with timestamps; its arrow menu offers the note without timestamps, Copy AI Note and Transcript, Copy Transcript, Copy Summary, and Copy Tasks. The Actions (…) menu has Download Audio…, Link to Meeting…, and more.
When someone shares a meeting with you, you get a desktop notification and Shared with me shows an unread count. Anything you've shared appears under Shared by me.
Your calendar
Connect your Outlook calendar and Flow Notes ties recordings to the right meeting — the title, time, and invitees come along for free.
- Start a recording directly from a calendar event — the meeting is named and linked from the first second.
- Recorded events are flagged so you can see at a glance what's already captured.
- Need to fix a link? Use Link to a calendar meeting while recording, or Actions ▸ Link to Meeting… on any recording, to search your calendar and attach the right event. Linking also saves the invitee list, which is what lets action items go to the right people.
AI notes & settings
Settings has four panes: General (account, your name, appearance), Recording (permissions, microphone, speaker, meeting detection), AI & transcription (transcription, notes engine, Claude/ChatGPT accounts), and About (version, updates, what's new, run setup again). Changes save as you make them — a small Saved appears next to the control.
Choose how your notes are written
Open Settings ▸ AI & transcription. Transcription always runs in Applab's cloud. To get AI notes, connect your Claude account (below) and set it as your Notes engine — or a ChatGPT account if you prefer. Claude and ChatGPT write your notes on your own device, and handle Arabic and English equally well.
Set up Claude (recommended)
You don't need to install anything by hand first — Flow Notes sets the Claude command‑line tool up for you.
- In Settings ▸ AI & transcription, open Claude & ChatGPT accounts and select Add Claude account…
- Get the CLI in place. If the
claudecommand isn't on your machine yet, select Install Claude Code… and Flow Notes installs it. (Already have it? Click Re‑check.) - Sign in. Your browser opens the Claude sign‑in. Approve access and the account is added — Flow Notes comes back to the front on its own. No Terminal and no code to copy. (If you already use
claude setup-token, Paste a token instead is on the same sheet.) - Set Notes engine to Claude — <your account>, and check that claude CLI shows Found.
- Pick a Model. Under Latest, Opus gives the richest notes, Sonnet is the fast, balanced default, and Haiku is the quickest; these always follow Claude's newest release. Under Specific version you can pin one — Fable 5.1, Opus 5.5, Opus 5, Opus 4.8, Sonnet 5.5, Sonnet 5, or Haiku 4.5 — so notes and interview assessments stay on it.
You can add more than one account (e.g. Work and Personal), rename them, and switch the active one from this screen. A new model applies to the next notes you generate — use Regenerate… on a meeting to re‑run it with your new choice.
Select Add ChatGPT account… (choose Install OpenAI Codex… first if the CLI is missing), then Sign in with ChatGPT in your browser. Flow Notes notices when you're signed in — select Add account, then set the notes engine to ChatGPT — <your account>. There's no model picker for ChatGPT.
Click Re‑check, or quit and reopen Flow Notes. If the notes engine picker is greyed out, your organization manages it for you.
Other settings worth a look
Your name
General — the name shown instead of “Me” across transcripts, notes, and tasks. Press Return to apply it to existing recordings too.
Appearance
General — Light, Dark, or match your System theme.
Microphone & speaker
Recording — pick your devices and check them with Test microphone / Test speaker.
Meeting Detection
Recording — prompt to record when a call starts, or start automatically.
Connect your AI assistant (MCP)
Flow Notes includes a secure, read‑only MCP server — so an AI assistant like Claude can search and read your meetings, notes, transcripts, and action items, and answer questions about them in plain language. Ask “what did we decide last week?” and let the assistant pull it from your recordings.
1. It only ever sees the meetings you already have access to — your own and ones shared with you. 2. It's off until an admin enables it for your organization, so if the steps below don't connect yet, check with your Flow Notes admin.
How to connect
- In your MCP client — Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or the connectors settings on claude.ai — add a remote / HTTP MCP server.
- Paste the Flow Notes MCP endpoint as the server URL. That's all the client needs — no client ID or secret to enter.
- When prompted, sign in with the same Microsoft account you use for Flow Notes. Approve access and you're connected — the connection lasts about 90 days before you're asked to sign in again.
What the assistant can do
The server exposes five read‑only tools:
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
search_meetings | Find or list the meetings you can access. Filter by free text (title + summary), participant, and/or a date range. |
get_meeting | Get one meeting's detail — title, date, duration, participants, and whether it has notes / a transcript. |
get_notes | Get a meeting's AI notes: summary, topics, key points, decisions, and action items. |
get_transcript | Get a meeting's full transcript, one page at a time (needs transcript‑level access). |
list_action_items | List action items across your meetings — filter to just yours, open items only, a date range, or one meeting. “Mine” matches tasks assigned to you by identity or by your full name, and flags the ones that only might be yours. |
Try asking
search_meetings (query + that date), then reads the decisions with get_notes.list_action_items with assignedToMe and openOnly — certain matches first, possible ones marked as such.search_meetings → get_meeting → get_transcript to locate the exact moment.search_meetings (participant: Sarah, last month) then list_action_items per meeting.Shortcuts & tips
| Where | Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Anywhere | ⌘+R / Ctrl+R | Start a new recording (while recording, arm Stop). |
| Anywhere | ⌘+I / Ctrl+I | Import a recording to transcribe an existing audio file. |
| Anywhere | ⌘+, / Ctrl+, | Open Settings. |
| Anywhere | ⌘+[ / Ctrl+[ | Go Back (for example, from a meeting to the library). |
| Library | ⌘+F / Ctrl+F | Jump to the meeting search. |
| Transcript tab | ⌘+F / Ctrl+F | Search the transcript; ↑ / ↓ step through matches. |
| Meeting playback | Space or K | Play / pause. |
| Meeting playback | J / L | Skip back / forward 10 seconds. |
| Meeting playback | ← / → | Skip back / forward 5 seconds. |
| Meeting playback | Shift+, / Shift+. | Slower / faster playback. |
| Calendar | ← / →, T | Previous / next week, back to today. |
| Menus & dialogs | ↓, arrows, Esc | Open a menu, move through it, close it (or a dialog). |
- Click any timestamp or transcript line to jump the audio to that moment.
- Found a rough edge? Send feedback at the bottom of the sidebar goes straight to the team — see section 13.
Turn on Meeting Detection so the record prompt finds you, set your name so notes read naturally, connect your calendar so action items reach the right people, and add your Claude account. A few small settings, far better notes.
Updates & what's new
Flow Notes updates itself in the background on both macOS and Windows. After an update, a What's new sheet shows the highlights once — never while you're recording. Missed it? Select What's new in the sidebar (a dot marks unread highlights) or Settings ▸ About ▸ See the highlights.
- When an update is ready, a banner offers Restart to install. During a recording it waits — the update installs when you finish recording and quit.
- Check for updates yourself any time from Settings ▸ About ▸ Software updates.
- If your organization requires a newer version, a banner says Update to Flow Notes X and by when (you can choose Later until then); past the deadline, an Update required screen offers Update now or Download installer.
- Signed out unexpectedly? A banner with Sign in again appears when your session expires — your recordings are safe.
Feedback & getting help
Flow Notes is actively developed, and the fastest way it gets better is you telling us what's rough or missing. Every note goes straight to the team — please don't hold back.
Send feedback or report a bug
- Select Send feedback at the bottom of the sidebar (between What's new and Settings).
- Pick a category — Bug if something's broken, Idea for a suggestion, or Other.
- Describe it in your own words. For a bug, what you did and what you expected helps most.
- Attach images if they help show the problem — up to 4 screenshots, or paste one straight in.
- Select Send. Flow Notes automatically includes your app version, operating system, and the screen you were on, plus your name so the team can follow up. Please don't paste passwords or secrets.
If you're viewing a meeting when you open feedback, you can tick the option to attach a reference to it. Only the meeting's identifier is sent so the team can find it — never your recording, transcript, or notes content.
Found a bug
Something didn't work, looked wrong, or crashed — send it as a Bug with a screenshot.
Have an idea
A feature you wish existed or a rough edge to smooth — send it as an Idea.
Something you love
Tell us that too — knowing what's working helps us keep it that way.
Stuck on setup or not sure how something works? Send a note through the same Send feedback button, or reach out to your Flow Notes admin — they can check organization policy (which engine is allowed, whether MCP is enabled, how long recordings are kept) and escalate to the team.