The Roomtone guide to recording a meeting
Most meeting-recording guides list three or four methods, because most meeting tools have built three or four different products to cover the ways a meeting can happen — a bot, a desktop app, dialing in, a mobile app. Roomtone hasn't built a desktop app, and there's no way to dial into a call as a separate participant. What's actually shipped comes down to two real methods, and this guide is about using the right one, not about padding out a list.
Method 1: Send the notetaker into the call
If the meeting already has a Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams link, paste it into Roomtone and a notetaker joins that meeting as a visible participant. Everyone on the call sees it arrive, the same way they'd see any other attendee join late. It stays for the meeting, and Roomtone writes up the summary, decisions and action items afterward from what it captured.
The notetaker is built and running on our side, but it is not in the version currently on the App Store — it arrives in the next release. Recording the room, described below, works today. We would rather say that here than let you download the app looking for a button that is not there yet.
This is the right tool when the meeting is already a scheduled video call and a bot joining is unremarkable — a sales call, an interview, a training session, anything where the format already expects an attendee list.
It's a Pro feature — the free plan doesn't include it.
Method 2: Record the room
Most of the meetings that matter to a working professional don't have a link at all — a conversation across a table, a client visit, a walk, a one-on-one in someone's office. For those, Roomtone records from the phone that's already there. One tap, and the room itself is the source.
This also covers phone calls, with one real constraint worth naming honestly: iOS doesn't let any app record a call's audio directly. The moment a call connects, the system hands the microphone to the call and nothing else gets it — that's a platform rule, not a Roomtone limitation, and any app that claims to record a phone call straight off the line is either routing it through its own phone number or only capturing your side. Put the call on speaker, and Roomtone records the room exactly like it would an in-person meeting — both voices, same write-up.
Picking between them
- Already have a Zoom, Meet or Teams link, and a bot joining is expected? Send the notetaker.
- Meeting is across a table, at a site, or anywhere without a link? Record the room.
- Phone call and both sides need capturing? Put it on speaker and record the room — nothing else gets access to a live call's audio on iOS, by design.
- Not sure? Record the room. It works for anything, including a video call playing out loud instead of joined as a bot.
What you get either way
Both methods end at the same place: a transcript, a summary, the decisions that were made, and the action items with who owns them. The free plan covers three recordings up to 30 minutes each, with the summary — enough to see whether the write-up is any good before paying for more. Pro removes the recording limit and the 30-minute cap, and adds sharing and the ability to ask questions across everything you have recorded. The notetaker joins Pro in the next release.
One thing Roomtone doesn't do yet, worth saying plainly rather than glossing over: it doesn't attach real names to who said what in the transcript. A transcript that invents a name is worse than one that just says "A" and "B" — so for now, it says that.