System Audio & Meeting Capture
Capture both sides of a call by recording your microphone and your computer's audio — with no bot in the meeting.
Your microphone only hears your half of a video call. The other people come out of your speakers, and a microphone pointed at you doesn't reliably catch them.
System audio capture solves that by recording what your computer is playing alongside what your microphone hears. The transcript ends up with both sides — and nobody had to admit a bot to the meeting.
What You Need
macOS 14.2 (Sonoma) or later, and the desktop app.
That's the whole list. There's no setting to turn on: whenever you record on a Mac that supports it, Prismical captures system audio alongside your microphone automatically. macOS asks permission the first time, and once you've said yes it stays said.
You can check the state under Settings → Preferences → Permissions, where System audio reads "Captures meeting audio from other participants (macOS 14.2+)."
Which Apps It Works With
All of them. Prismical captures your Mac's audio output as a whole rather than hooking into any particular app, so it doesn't care whether the call is Zoom, Meet, Teams, Slack, Discord, WebEx, or a browser tab. If you can hear it, Prismical can transcribe it.
Because the capture is system-wide, it takes in anything else playing at the time — a video in another tab, a notification chime, music. Worth a thought before recording something you'll rely on.
You and Them
Recording two sources is what makes speaker labels work. Your microphone is you; system audio is everyone else. That's how the transcript separates You from Them without needing to recognize anyone's voice.
It also means the labels reflect which device the audio came through, not who was talking. Three people around one laptop all arrive through the microphone, so they all come out as You. See Transcripts.
Wear Headphones
Recording your speakers and your microphone at once creates an obvious problem: your microphone also hears your speakers, so the other person's voice arrives twice — once cleanly from system audio, and once as an echo bleeding into your track.
Headphones solve this completely, and they're the single easiest thing you can do for transcript quality on a call. System audio is captured from your Mac's output before it ever reaches your headphones, so the other side is recorded just as cleanly — you simply stop your microphone hearing it too.
On speakers, expect some of the other person's words to bleed into your side of the transcript.
On Other Platforms
Recording still works everywhere — it just captures your microphone.
| What recording captures | |
|---|---|
| macOS 14.2+ | Microphone and system audio |
| macOS 13–14.1 | Microphone |
| Windows | Microphone |
| Web | Microphone |
| iOS, Android | Microphone |
For an in-person conversation this is exactly right — one microphone in the room is the whole story, and your phone is a perfectly good recorder. It's video calls where system audio earns its keep.
On a Mac running macOS 13 or earlier, recording a video call succeeds but captures only your side. There's no error — it just quietly records less than you'd expect. If you're on an older Mac, check what you're getting before you rely on it.
See What's different per platform for the full comparison.