Meeting notetaker

The meeting notetaker works for both calls and in-person meetings by recording system audio, and can also be used for lectures, interviews, and other audio sources. The feature is available on both Mac and Windows through the Tana desktop app and supports over 60 languages with automatic language detection.

Tana now offers a fully integrated AI meeting notetaker as part of the desktop experience. You can use it to transcribe meetings, generate summaries, and link notes directly to your work - without needing to install a plugin or add a bot.

How to set it up

1. Open the configuration for your meeting supertag

• You can use an existing tag (e.g. #meeting) or create a new one by typing # followed by your tag name anywhere in Tana.
• You can set up the meeting notetaker on as many supertags as you want.

2. Enable meeting notetaker on a supertag

• Toggle Audio-enabled tag on under the “AI and commands” section.
• Turn on Include system audio to include audio played by your computer, for example other voices in online meetings.
• Turn on Output as transcript if you want to transcribe with speaker separation and timestamps (stored in the note's source material).

This will automatically add the “Text processing agent” command with its default configuration.

See here for further customization of the text processing agent.

Enabling these options will make a Mic button appear on the supertag:

When you open a tagged meeting, you'll see the mic button below the title:

Start note taking

You can start a transcription in several ways:

• Click the microphone button on any note tagged with an audio-enabled supertag.
• Click the desktop notification if Tana detects a meeting or you've synced your Google Calendar to Tana.
• Use the command line with Cmd+K (or Ctrl+K) and choose “Start meeting with...”. and select the supertag you want to use (all audio-enabled tags will show).

When meeting transcription starts you’ll see a floating recording menu, and a recording indicator in the sidebar. This gives you quick controls to pause for privacy, or end the meeting and start post-processing. Clicking the recording indicator will open the meeting note in Tana.

Transcript view

You'll see a Transcribing... button on the meeting that you can click to open and see the live transcription in source material. This button will also be available when you pause or stop the transcription so you can revisit the transcription at any time.

Tana AI chat is available on all notes. To chat with a meeting note:
- Press space on an empty line inside the meeting
- Or click ✨ Ask AI about this content in the top right

Transcription language

Tana supports realtime transcription in over 60 languages. By default, transcription uses auto-detect, which can dynamically switch between languages during a meeting.

To change this:

• Shift-click the microphone button before starting the transcription,
• Click the globe icon in the transcription view during, or
• Set a default language using the Set default transcription language to... command

The summary will be generated in the same language as the spoken language. You can translate the summary by using AI chat.

Configure transcription

Transcription context

You can add context to improve the quality of transcription for difficult words or names. This is configured in the Realtime transcribe audio command (automatically added when you enable audio on a tag):

• Add the Transcription context parameter to the Realtime transcribe audio command under "Compact menu".
• Include names or other vocabulary manually, or reference a field (e.g. Attendees) to include dynamic context from the meeting.

Use cases beyond regular meetings

This feature is built for meetings but also works well for:

• User interviews
• Sales calls
• Hiring interviews
• Voice workflows
• Lectures
• And more!

Explore use cases and workflows in the Tana template store!