What Calls does
Calls works beside your meeting app, with no bot joining, and turns each call into live answers and a saved, searchable transcript on your Mac.
What Calls is
Any meeting app works with Calls: Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams or anything else that makes sound on your Mac. It listens to two sources on your Mac, your microphone and your Mac’s system audio, and builds the transcript as people talk. Nothing joins the meeting as a bot, so there’s no “Cluinn has joined” moment for the other side to see.
While the call runs, the Calls panel answers questions as they come up: “Catch me up”, “What did they mean?” or anything you type. Under it, a strip of Smart Cards brings up things nobody asked about. See Using the Calls panel.
Calls has two parts: Live Assist helps while the call is running, and Debrief is what you get from the saved call afterwards (see After the call).
Starting a call
Press ⌘\ (the default hotkey; you can change it, see Hotkeys), or let Cluinn offer. It watches for calls in 8 apps: Zoom, Google Meet, Webex, GoTo Meeting, Whereby, Slack huddles, Discord and Microsoft Teams in the browser. When one starts, Cluinn opens the Calls bar and you press Start. Cluinn recognizes a call from the meeting’s window title and checks that another app is using your microphone.
Teams is matched only when its window title says it’s in a call, so the Teams desktop app is hit-or-miss: use the hotkey there. If you close the Calls bar without starting, it won’t reopen automatically for 5 minutes (⌘\ still opens it). To stop the bar opening for one app, or to add an app that isn’t on the list, use Settings → Calls → Open automatically (see Calls settings).
Add a title, a folder and a call preset if you want them, then press Start. Calls needs the Screen Recording permission (Screen & System Audio Recording on macOS 15 and later) to hear the other side; see Permissions.
After the call
A finished call is saved as text on your Mac. The audio itself is never stored on Cluinn’s servers and never backed up. Open the call to rename it, tag it, read or download the transcript, work through its takeaways and ask questions in its ask box.
The Calls row in the sidebar opens All your calls, the Calls home page, which does the same across everything you’ve recorded, from a box that reads Ask about any of your calls. See Saved calls & chat, Folders & deleted calls and Speaker names.
Coach, also in the sidebar, reads your saved calls against a goal you set and shows what got in the way and what went well. See Coach.
Plan and limits
Calls is part of Pro, and the free trial includes all of it. Basic is dictation only. The transcript is always yours to view and download, on any plan; downloading an AI answer as a PDF is part of Pro. See Plans & trials.
Pro comes with a monthly pool of Calls hours and a maximum length for any single call, both fair-use ceilings set far above normal use. The figures are in the fair-use section of our Terms, and Usage explains when Cluinn mentions them.
Warning: Tell people you’re transcribing before you start. Recording rules differ by region, and some places need everyone on the call to agree. See our Terms.
Common questions
Why didn’t the Calls bar appear for my meeting?
It needs the meeting’s window plus another app using the mic. The Teams desktop app doesn’t always register, so press ⌘\ instead. If you closed the bar in the last 5 minutes, it waits out those 5 minutes before reopening. And if you removed the app in Settings → Calls → Open automatically, the bar won’t open for it.
Is any audio kept?
Not in your saved calls, and never stored on Cluinn’s servers. A saved call is text only: the transcript and its takeaways. Cluinn transcribes on your own Mac wherever it can: on a recent Apple silicon Mac with an active plan, your speech becomes text on the machine itself, with no external speech model and no audio uploaded. During a trial, or any time Cluinn can’t run the on-device model, the audio is sent to our servers to be turned into text and discarded straight after. A clip that can’t be transcribed straight away waits in your own folder on your Mac until it goes through, then it’s deleted. Audio is never backed up.
What happens if I hit the monthly hours?
Recording stops until the 1st, and the app says so: “You’ve used this month’s Calls hours”. Everything you’ve already recorded stays where it is.