The no-bot model

Boswell captures audio straight from your Mac: your microphone and whatever is playing through your speakers. Other people in the call see nothing new. There is no bot, no email invitation, and no fifth attendee appearing in the participant list.

How it works

macOS lets an app record system audio with your permission. Boswell asks for that once, then taps the audio stream directly from the OS — the same stream that headphones or a speaker would receive. Your video conferencing app (Zoom, Teams, Meet, or any other) is unaware this is happening. This is a dedicated system-audio recording permission — not Screen Recording; Boswell never sees your screen.

Your microphone picks up your side of the conversation. Boswell keeps the two streams — your mic and the system audio — and transcribes them locally with Apple’s on-device speech recognition.

Compared to cloud meeting bots

Many transcription services work differently: they join your call as a separate account — a bot participant — that records the meeting server-side.

	Cloud meeting bot	Boswell
Joins the call	Yes — visible to all attendees	No — captures from the OS
Audio leaves your machine	Yes — uploaded to vendor servers	No — stays on disk by default
Participants see it	Yes	No
Works for any audio	No — video calls only	Yes — calls, dictation, imported files
Notes after cancellation	Vendor’s platform	On your Mac, in Boswell

What this means for your calls

Because Boswell is invisible to other attendees, there is no automatic signal to participants that recording is happening. That puts the responsibility for consent squarely on you. See the Recording consent page for guidance on how to handle this.