Meeting recording silent or transcript empty? How to fix it

An empty transcript with good audio is a fifth, separate problem: the speech recogniser.

This guide shows how to tell which one you have. It starts with the reason these failures are easy to miss.

Why a silent file can look fine

Silence has bytes. A recorder that receives nothing but zeroes still writes an hour of zeroes, and the file comes out the size an hour of audio should be. Nothing in the file size, the duration or the fact that the file exists tells you whether anyone was heard.

macOS makes this more likely than it sounds. When an app is refused the microphone, macOS generally hands it silence rather than an error. The app records normally, shows a timer, and saves a file. The only evidence is that the file is flat.

So the useful checks are about level, not size:

• Open the recording in QuickTime Player or any audio editor and look at, or listen to, a few points in the middle.
• In an audio editor, the waveform of a silent file is a flat line. A quiet room is not quite flat.
• If your recorder shows a live level meter, watch it move when you speak before relying on it.

Find the cause

Nothing at all was recorded

Start with the microphone permission. Open System Settings › Privacy & Security › Microphone and check the switch next to the recorder. If you change it, quit and reopen the app. If the app is not in the list or the switch will not stay on, Mac microphone permission not working goes through the causes, including builds macOS will not prompt for.

Then check the Mac actually hears you: open System Settings › Sound, choose Input under Output & Input, and speak. If the Input level meter does not move, no app will hear you either.

Your side is silent, theirs is fine

The permission is probably fine; the input is wrong. The Mac records from whichever input is selected in System Settings › Sound, and that is not always the microphone you are speaking into. Common cases:

• A monitor or dock with its own microphone became the input when you plugged in.
• A headset you are not wearing is still connected over Bluetooth.
• A virtual audio device from another app (a noise filter, a streaming tool) is selected, and that app is not running.
• The input volume is at zero, or a headset's hardware mute is on.

Choosing the right microphone on a Mac covers the settings, and why Control Centre, System Settings and your call app can each show a different microphone.

Their side is silent, yours is fine

The recorder can hear you but not the call. Three likely causes:

1. The system audio permission is off. On macOS 26 the permission to record what the Mac plays is separate from the microphone. See allowing an app to record your Mac's audio.
2. The call was not playing on this Mac. If you took the call on your phone, a second computer, or a conference-room system, there was nothing for the Mac to capture.
3. The call app's own output was muted. Muting the call app or the Mac at zero volume can leave nothing to capture, depending on how the recorder listens.

The sound stops partway through

A recording that is fine for twenty minutes and silent after usually means a device changed. The usual suspect is a Bluetooth headset: it disconnects, switches to your phone, or switches into its lower-quality headset mode when its microphone is used, and the Mac moves to a different input. When your Mac switches audio devices in the middle of a call covers the settings that stop it happening.

The recording has sound but the transcript is empty

This is a transcription problem, not a recording one. Check:

• The language. On-device speech recognition supports a limited set of languages. Speech in another language may produce nothing, or nonsense.
• The speech model. On-device recognition needs Apple's speech model for the language on the Mac. Until it has downloaded, there is no transcript.
• The Mac. On-device transcription with Apple's newer speech recognition needs macOS 26 and Apple silicon.

Speech recognition not working on a Mac goes through each.

Test before the meeting that matters

A two-minute test catches all of the above:

1. Start a call with yourself, or play a video with speech on the Mac.
2. Start the recorder and say a sentence.
3. Stop, open the recording, and check that both your voice and the other audio are there.
4. Check the transcript has both.

Repeat after any change of headset, dock, monitor or macOS update.

How Notey reports a silent side

Notey records your microphone and the sound your Mac plays as two separate tracks, and watches each while it records. It judges a track by whether audio is arriving at all, not by how loud it is, because a silent room and a dead input produce the same samples. A track that has stopped delivering is a problem; a quiet room is not.

What you see while recording:

• A track has stopped. A warning stays on screen, wherever you are in the app, until the track comes back: "Notey has stopped hearing your microphone." or "Notey has stopped hearing the other people.", with "Take notes by hand until it comes back." It cannot be dismissed while the track is still gone.
• Nothing heard yet. If a side has delivered only silence for the first 30 seconds, its lane says so. For your side it suggests checking the permission in System Settings › Privacy & Security and that the microphone is not muted. For the other side it suggests checking that the call is playing through this Mac, not a phone or another device.
• The other side was never started. If the system audio permission is missing, Notey says "Only your microphone is being recorded".

After the meeting, if one side stopped arriving, the meeting is marked incomplete in the list and says why, instead of being passed off as whole. Notey does not fill a missing track with silence, so the gap stays visible. Why a recording is marked incomplete explains the mark and what to check next.

Notey records from the input selected in System Settings › Sound. If your side is silent in Notey, check that setting first.

If a transcript is empty but both tracks have sound, and Notey shows "The speech model has not been downloaded yet", press Download. Notey keeps the recording in the meantime, so the meeting is not lost.

Frequently asked questions

Why is my meeting recording silent when the file is the right size?

Silence takes up space too. A recorder that was refused the microphone, or pointed at an input nobody spoke into, still writes a file of the full length. The size tells you the recorder ran; only the audio level tells you it heard anything.

Why did only my side of the call get recorded?

The recorder has the microphone but not the sound your Mac plays. On macOS 26 that is a separate permission, under Privacy & Security › Screen & System Audio Recording. It can also mean the call was playing on another device.

Why is my transcript empty when the recording has sound?

The speech recogniser did not run or did not recognise the language. Check that on-device speech recognition supports the language spoken and that its speech model has finished downloading.

Can I recover audio from a silent recording?

No. If the recorder received silence, there is nothing in the file to recover. Fix the cause before the next meeting, and make a short test recording to confirm it.