Keeping your meeting notes on two Macs

Sign in with the same account on each Mac, enter one recovery key on each, and from then on a meeting recorded on your laptop appears on your desktop with its transcript and notes, and a name you type on the desktop appears on the laptop. The recording itself stays on the Mac that made it.

This guide covers how to set sync up, what travels between your Macs and what does not, how often it happens, what happens when two Macs change the same thing, and the one rule that matters more than the rest: keep the recovery key somewhere safe.

How sync works

Notey records and transcribes on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded until you set sync up.

When you do:

• Each meeting is encrypted on your Mac before it leaves, using a key derived from a recovery key.
• The recovery key exists only on your Macs. Notey never receives it.
• Notey stores ciphertext it cannot read. It holds the copy your Macs sync through; it cannot open it.
• Setting sync up is making or entering the recovery key. Until that is done, the Sync screen says "Not set up on this Mac. Nothing has been uploaded from it."

The only places your synced meetings can be read are Macs you have entered the key on.

Set it up on the first Mac

1. Sign in to Notey with the Account button in the top bar, with Google or with your email address. Sync needs an account; recording and transcription do not.
2. On the Account screen, open Sync.
3. Choose Set up sync on this Mac.
4. Notey shows your recovery key once. Save it somewhere you will find again — a password manager is the usual choice. Notey has no copy and cannot make you a new one.
5. Confirm you have saved it. Sync turns on and the first upload starts.

The Sync screen then shows that sync is on, which account it uses, when it last synced, how many meetings are on the account, and what this Mac is called.

Add a second Mac

1. Install Notey on the second Mac. It needs Apple silicon and macOS 26 or later.
2. Sign in with the same account you used on the first Mac: the same Google account or the same email address.
3. Open Sync from the Account screen and choose I have a recovery key from another Mac.
4. Enter the recovery key.

Notey checks the key against what the first Mac has already synced before it keeps it. If you mistype a character, it tells you the key has a typo; if you enter a different valid key, it tells you this account's meetings were synced with a different key. Nothing is uploaded until the right key is in. Once it is, the first Mac's meetings appear in the list within about a minute.

The same steps set up a replacement Mac. The meeting list can be filtered by which Mac recorded a meeting, so on a Mac that holds meetings from both, you can see which came from where.

What syncs and what does not

Each Mac keeps its own settings: whether voice recognition is on, whether transcripts are improved, calendar choices. Those do not sync.

Recordings stay where they were made

Open a meeting on the Mac that did not record it, and where the player would be there is one line: "Recorded on Ana's MacBook Pro. The recording stays on that Mac; the transcript and notes are here." There are no play controls, and the meeting is not marked incomplete.

Recordings are never uploaded, not even encrypted, so no Mac can fetch one from another. To protect recordings against losing a Mac, back up that Mac's disk; backing up meeting recordings covers how. If an earlier version of Notey kept an encrypted copy of your recordings, Notey deletes it from its storage automatically the next time it syncs.

The better transcript is made where the recording is

After an English meeting, Notey goes over the recording again to improve the transcript and to tell the voices on the other side apart. Both need the recording, so both run only on the Mac that has it. The results sync to your other Macs like any other change; the other Mac never redoes the work.

If you are reading a meeting when its improved transcript arrives, the transcript does not change under you while it is open. Notes and names can still appear while you read.

How often it syncs

Sync runs by itself, whether or not the Notey window is open: when Notey starts, every few minutes while it is running, and shortly after you change something. A change on one Mac is normally on the other within five minutes. Sync now on the Sync screen runs one straight away and says how many meetings it sent and received.

A meeting being recorded is not sent until it stops. Sync does not touch the Start button, the recording indicator or the recording itself.

Sync is not live collaboration. If you have both Macs open side by side, an edit on one appears on the other at the next sync, not as you type.

When two Macs change the same thing

Both Macs keep working without a network, and record and edit as normal. When they are back online, everything from both ends up on both, and no meeting appears twice.

When both Macs changed the same thing before they synced:

• Something you typed beats something the AI wrote. If the AI wrote a summary on one Mac and you rewrote it on the other, your version stands on both.
• Between two of your own edits, the later one stands. The other is not thrown away: it is listed on the Sync screen under Edits kept aside, with its text and the Mac it came from, so you can copy it back if it was the better one.
• Different changes to one meeting both land. A speaker named on one Mac and a line moved on the other both show on both.

Deleting a meeting deletes it everywhere

With sync on, deleting a meeting on any Mac removes it from your account and from your other Macs at their next sync, including the recording on the Mac that made it. The confirmation says so before anything happens and names that Mac. A delete wins over an edit made elsewhere before the Macs synced; the edit goes to Edits kept aside.

This matters for retention: if your policy is to delete client recordings after a month, deleting them on one Mac deletes them on all of them. Deleting a meeting also removes its contribution to any voice Notey learned from it, on every Mac, and Forget this voice on one Mac forgets it on all of them.

Lose the key, lose the synced copy

This is the trade-off of a copy the provider cannot read, and it is worth being plain about.

• The meetings on each Mac are on that Mac's disk. Losing the key does not touch them.
• The synced copy cannot be opened without the key. Not by you, not by Notey. There is no reset, because Notey never had the key.
• A new Mac cannot join without the key.

So store the recovery key somewhere that survives losing a Mac: a password manager that syncs, a printed copy in a drawer, or both. If you have lost your recovery key explains what can and cannot be done.

When sync is not working

The Sync row on the Account screen always says what is true now: "On — last synced 2 minutes ago", "Off", "Not set up on this Mac", or the problem, such as not being able to reach Notey's storage, with when it last synced and that it will try again. If your session has expired it asks you to sign in again. If one meeting cannot be brought up to date, the others still are, and the Sync screen names that meeting with the reason. Meeting notes not syncing between Macs goes through each status and what to check.

Signing out pauses sync; every meeting stays on the Mac. Each Mac's sync belongs to the account it was set up for: signing in on that Mac as a different account does not send its meetings to the other account, and the Sync screen says so.

Turn off on the Sync screen stops uploading and downloading. Every meeting on the Mac stays where it is.

Why not just copy the files?

You could copy Notey's data folder to an external disk, or let a general-purpose backup such as Time Machine include it. That works for disaster recovery, and it is a reasonable thing to do alongside sync.

Two things to consider:

• Where the copy goes. A general cloud backup of your home folder may include meeting audio, in a form the cloud provider could read. That may conflict with what you told the people you recorded.
• Two Macs in use. A folder copy is a snapshot. It does not bring edits from one Mac to the other or settle what happens when both changed a meeting.

If you rely on a general backup, check whether it is encrypted end to end and whether it includes recordings. Where does meeting audio go? has the questions to ask of any service that holds meeting data.

What local-first means here

Notey is built so that recording, transcription, search and reading meetings work with no account and no network. Sync is the feature that deliberately sends your meetings somewhere, and it is built so that what leaves the Mac is encrypted there first and the recording stays behind unless you switch on the separate copy. It is part of the paid plans, and it does not count against the AI hours a plan includes. Local-first meeting notes explains the approach, and why the network should only be used when you ask for something.

With your meetings on every Mac, search works on each: by what was said or by time, with ⌘K. Building a searchable archive of your meetings covers organising them with projects so an archive of hundreds of meetings stays usable. For how a consultant fits this into a working day across client engagements, see AI meeting notes for consultants; for which Mac to record on when you have two, see a laptop and desktop meeting workflow.

Frequently asked questions

Can I get my Notey meetings on a second Mac?

Yes. Sign in with the same account on both Macs and enter the recovery key from the first Mac on the second. Transcripts, notes, speaker names and projects then sync between them in the background, every few minutes.

Are my recordings synced?

No. The recording stays on the Mac that made it, and the other Mac says so. Notey never uploads recordings, not even encrypted.

What happens if I lose the recovery key?

The synced copy cannot be opened without it. Notey never had the key, so it cannot reset it or decrypt anything for you. Meetings already on your Macs are unaffected; they are on those disks.

Can Notey read what I sync?

No. Each meeting is encrypted on your Mac before it leaves, with a key derived from your recovery key, and Notey holds only the encrypted copy.

Do I need an account to sync?

Yes. Recording, transcription, search and reading meetings need no account, but sync and AI notes do. Sync between your Macs is part of the paid plans.